What to Do When the Users of an Ontology Merging System Want the Impossible? Towards Determining Compatibility of Generic Merge Requirements

Ontology merging systems enable the reusability and interoperability of existing knowledge. Ideally, they allow their users to specify which characteristics the merged ontology should have. In prior work, we have identified Generic Merge Requirements (GMRs) reflecting such characteristics. However, not all of them can be met simultaneously. Thus, if a system allows users to select which GMRs should be met, it needs a way to deal with incompatible GMRs. In this paper, we analyze in detail which GMRs are (in-)compatible, and propose a graph based approach to determining and ranking maximum compatible supersets of user-specified GMRs. Our analysis shows that this is indeed feasible to detect the compatible supersets of the given GMRs that can be fulfilled simultaneously. This approach is implemented in the open source CoMerger tool.