Merge is useful when you have two independent ontologies which have some overlap, possibly with different names or structures, and you want to combine them into a single, larger ontology. When merging, for each of the two ontologies, you can choose whether or not to incorporate the entire ontology into the target project. If you only want to include a part, merge mode will help you determine which frames you need for completeness and consistency.
You can use merge to incorporate two additional ontologies into an existing project. By changing the ontologies specified on the ontology menus, you can, for example, merge two classes that are in the working ontology.
You can extend this to use merge mode simply to combine frames in an existing project. For example, you could create two empty projects to use as dummy sources for the merge, and then enable merge mode and use the merging functionality to combine frames in your existing project.
Examples and descriptions in the help files are given for a new, empty project.
In merge mode, the Prompt Tab has three subtabs:
Via these tabs, PROMPT guides you through the merging process making suggestions, identifying conflicts, and proposing conflict-resolution strategies.
The Suggestions Tab contains a list of suggested operations. At the first stage, merge suggestions are based solely on the linguistic similarity of the frame names. Using your knowledge of the source ontologies, you can create, edit, remove, and perform suggestions on the list. As you make changes, PROMPT considers the structure of the ontology around the arguments to the latest operations and proposes other operations that you should perform. For example, if you have merged two classes, creating a new class which combines all of their slots, PROMPT may suggest merging similar slots as well.
The possible merge operations are:
Frames that have been merged or copied are marked with a mapped
icon in The Result Window and The Source Knowledge Bases Window.
The Conflicts Tab contains a list of conflicts that have arisen because of operations you have performed. Each time you perform an operation, PROMPT determines any conflicts the operation may have caused in the merged ontology and proposes possible solutions to the conflicts.
When you first start a merge, the Conflicts tab is empty. When conflicts arise, the tab name is highlighted in red.
The New Operations Tab is a working area that shows your source ontologies and allows you to create new operations. Icons show which frames from the source ontologies have already been incorporated into the working project.
Next: Extract Mode