Note on the refinement of ontologies

Ontologies have emerged as one of the key issues in information integration and interoperability and in their application to knowledge management and electronic commerce. A trend towards formal methods for ontology management is obvious. This paper discusses a concept which can be expected to bc of great importance to formal ontology management, and which is well-known in traditional software development: refinement. We define and discuss ontology refinement, give illustrating examples, and highlight its advantages as compared to other forms of ontology revision.