Ontologies are conceptual models of a domain of discourse and it
is used in a number of applications to model a field of knowledge. For
example, SNOMED, an ontology of medical terminology, is widely
used among medical professionals. Commercial ontologies, such as
SNOMED, can have millions of concepts. People who want to use
these ontologies need an understanding thereof, but the sheer magni-
tude of these ontologies hampers comprehension. It was within this
context that the need arose for software tools that facilitate the un-
derstanding of ontologies. Given this background, our aim is to in-
vestigate a new area within the field of ontologies, namely ontology
comprehension. We make a contribution to it by writing a software
tool of our own. This software tool, PathViz, helps users to under-
stand how different concepts in an ontology are related to each other
and what effect an ontology reasoner has on the way concepts in an
ontology relate to each other.
Johann Bergh is a MSc student at Computer Science, Stellenbosch University.