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  <front>
    <journal-meta />
    <article-meta>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>Consistency-driven Argumentation for Alignment Agreement</article-title>
      </title-group>
      <contrib-group>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>INRIA</string-name>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Avenue de l'Europe</string-name>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Montbonnot Saint Martin</string-name>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>France</string-name>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>cassia.trojahn</string-name>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>jerome.euzenat}@inrialpes.fr</string-name>
        </contrib>
      </contrib-group>
      <abstract>
        <p>Ontology alignment agreement aims at overcoming the problem that arises when different parties need to conciliate their conflicting views on ontology alignments. Argumentation has been applied as a way for supporting the creation and exchange of arguments, followed by the reasoning on their acceptability. Here we use arguments as positions that support or reject correspondences. Applying only argumentation to select correspondences may lead to alignments which relates ontologies in an inconsistent way. In order to address this problem, we define maximal consistent sub-consolidations which generate consistent and argumentation-grounded alignments. We propose a strategy for computing them involving both argumentation and logical inconsistency detection. It removes correspondences that introduce inconsistencies into the resulting alignment and allows for maintaining the consistency within an argumentation system. We present experiments comparing the different approaches. The (partial) experiments suggest that applying consistency checking and argumentation independently significantly improves results, while using them together does not bring so much. The features of consistency checking and argumentation leading to this result are analysed.</p>
      </abstract>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
  <body>
    <sec id="sec-1">
      <title>-</title>
      <p>Due to the diverse ways of exploring the ontology matching problem, matching systems
generally differ in the alignments generated between two ontologies. Some approaches
may be better suited for some ontologies, or some tasks, than others. Ontology
alignment agreement aims at overcoming the problem of allowing different parties to
conciliate their conflicting points of view on alignments. There may be different ways to
perform alignment agreement, such as voting or weighting. In this paper, we consider
argumentation which offers a more reasoned way to decide which correspondences to
preserve.</p>
      <p>
        Argumentation theory has been exploited as a way to support the comparison and
selection of correspondences within an alignment process. Correspondences are
represented as arguments and argumentation frameworks support the reasoning on their
acceptability. This approach has been used in different scenarios. [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref13">13</xref>
        ] propose an
approach for supporting the creation and exchange of different arguments, that support or
reject correspondences in the context of agent communication. In [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref18">18</xref>
        ], different
matchers work on the basis of particular approaches achieving distinct results that are
compared and agreed via an argumentation process.
      </p>
      <p>
        An open issue in alignment agreement is related to the inconsistency in the agreed
alignment. Indeed, some selected sets of correspondences may relate the ontology in an
inconsistent way. Most matching systems do not consider logic-based semantics in their
algorithms. As a result, almost all matching systems produce incoherent alignments
[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref14">14</xref>
        ]. Although argumentation aims at resolving conflicts on the alignments generated
by these systems, this process does not guarantee that the agreed alignment is consistent
even if the initial alignments were consistent.
      </p>
      <p>In this paper, we propose a model that involves both argumentation and logical
inconsistency detection. We focus on the scenario where matchers working on the basis
of different matching approaches try to reach a consensus on their alignments. First,
matchers generate their correspondences, representing them as arguments. Next, they
exchange their arguments and interpret them under argumentation frameworks based on
their individual preferences. The arguments in every individual set of acceptable
arguments are considered as an agreed alignment. Then, the inconsistent correspondences
in such sets are removed, in order to generate a maximal consistent agreed alignment.
This allows for maintaining the consistency within an argumentation system. We
evaluate our proposal on a standard set of alignments. Though theoretically grounded, the
consistency step does not improve argumentation alone. For some test cases, the
argumentation process is incidentally able to provide consistent agreed alignments. We
describe the features of consistency checking and argumentation which cause this
result.</p>
      <p>The rest of the paper is organised as follows. First, we introduce alignments and
inconsistency of alignments (§2). We then present the argumentation approach for
alignment agreement (§3). Next, the consistency-driven argumentation protocol is presented
(§4) and its evaluation is discussed (§5). Finally, we discuss related work (§6) and
conclude the paper (§7).
2</p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-2">
      <title>Alignments and Inconsistency</title>
      <p>An alignment (A) is a set of correspondences from a pair of ontologies (o and o′). Each
correspondence is a quadruple: he, e′, r, ni, where e ∈ o, e′ ∈ o′, r is the relation
between e and e′, taken from set of alignment relations (e.g., ≡, ⊑, ⊒ or ⊥), and n ∈ [0 1]
is a confidence level (e.g., measure of confidence in the fact that the correspondence
holds). For instance, given the two ontologies of Figure 1, one can consider the
following correspondences, meaning that (1) the two classes Person in both ontologies are the
same, and that (2) DepartmentHead in the first ontology is subsumed by Department in
the second ontology.
(1)
(2)</p>
      <p>hPersono, Persono′ , ≡, 1.0i
hDepartmentHeado, Departmento′ , ⊑, 0.8i</p>
      <p>
        The semantics of alignments provides a definition of how alignments must be
interpreted. It is related to the semantics of the aligned ontologies, which is given by their
sets of models M(o) and M(o′). The main effect of alignments is to select compatible
pairs of models of the two related ontologies [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref8">8</xref>
        ].
hasAddress
      </p>
      <p>Address
DepartmentHead</p>
      <p>manages
ProductLine</p>
      <p>=
⊑</p>
      <p>hasContact
Contact</p>
      <p>Employee
manages</p>
      <p>Person</p>
      <p>Product
Dpt</p>
      <p>Department
⊗</p>
      <p>Definition 1 (Satisfied correspondence). A correspondence c = he, e′, ri is satisfied
by two models m, m′ of o, o′ on a common domain D if and only if m ∈ M(o),
m ∈ M(o′) and
′</p>
      <p>hm(e), m′(e′)i ∈ rU
such that rU ⊆ D×D is the interpretation of the relation. This is denoted as m, m′ |= c.</p>
      <p>For instance, in the language used as example, if m and m′ are respective models
of o and o′:
m, m′ |= hc, c′, ≡i iff m(c) = m (c )</p>
      <p>′ ′
m, m′ |= hc, c′, ⊑i iff m(c) ⊆ m (c )</p>
      <p>′ ′
m, m′ |= hc, c′, ⊒i iff m(c) ⊇ m (c )</p>
      <p>′ ′
m, m′ |= hc, c′, ⊥i iff m(c) ∩ m (c ) = ∅
′ ′
Definition 2 (Models of aligned ontologies). Given two ontologies o and o′ and an
alignment A between these ontologies, a model of these aligned ontologies is a pair
hm, m′i ∈ M(o) × M(o′), such that each correspondence of A is satisfied by hm, m′i.</p>
      <p>The alignment acts as a model filter for the ontologies: it selects the interpretation
(here the models) of ontologies which are coherent with the alignments. This allows for
transferring information from one ontology to another since reducing the set of models
will entail more consequences in each aligned ontology.</p>
      <p>The notion of models of aligned ontologies is also useful for defining the usual
notions of consistency or consequence.</p>
      <p>Definition 3 (Consistent alignment). Given two ontologies o and o′ and an alignment
A between these ontologies, A is consistent if there exists a model of A. Otherwise A is
inconsistent.</p>
      <p>For instance, under the classical ontology interpretation, the alignment A presented
in Figure 1 is inconsistent as soon as there exists a DepartmentHead because any model
would require to satisfy the following equations:</p>
      <p>′
m(Persono) = m (Persono′ )</p>
      <p>′
m(DepartmentHeado) ⊆ m (Departmento′ )
m(DepartmentHeado) ⊆ m(Persono)</p>
      <p>′ ′
m (Departmento′ ) ∩ m (Persono′ ) = ∅
A
A
o
o′
and the DepartmentHead would need to be in both the interpretation of Departmento′
and in that of Persono′ .</p>
      <p>In this paper we will only consider inconsistency, however, the same applies to
incoherence: the fact that a class or relation may necessarily be empty, i.e., which would
cause inconsistency if instantiated.
3</p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-3">
      <title>Argumentation Approach</title>
      <p>
        In alignment agreement, arguments can be seen as positions that support or reject
correspondences. Such arguments interact following the notion of attack and are selected
according to the notion of acceptability. These notions were introduced by [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6">6</xref>
        ]. In Dung’s
model, the acceptability of an argument is based on a reasonable view: an argument
should be accepted only if every attack on it is attacked by an accepted argument. Dung
defines an argumentation framework as follows.
      </p>
      <p>
        Definition 4 (Argumentation framework [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6">6</xref>
        ]). An Argumentation Framework (AF) is
a pair hA, ⋉i, such that A is a set of arguments and ⋉ (attacks) is a binary relation
on A. a ⋉ b means that the argument a attacks the argument b. A set of arguments S
attacks an argument b iff b is attacked by an argument in S.
      </p>
      <p>
        In Dung’s model, all arguments have equal strength, and an attack always
succeeds (or successfully attacks). [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref2">2</xref>
        ] has introduced the notion of preference between
arguments, where an argument can defend itself against weaker arguments. This model
defines a global preference between arguments. In order to relate preferences to
different audiences, [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref3">3</xref>
        ] proposes to associate arguments to the values which supports them.
Different audiences can have different preferences over these values. This leads to the
notion of successful attacks, i.e., those which defeat the attacked argument, with respect
to an ordering on the preferences that are associated with the arguments. This allows
for accommodating different audiences with different interests and preferences.
      </p>
      <p>
        Bench-Capon’s framework acknowledges the importance of preferences when
considering arguments. However, in the specific context of ontology matching, an objection
can still be raised about the lack of complete mechanisms for handling persuasiveness
[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref10">10</xref>
        ]. Indeed, many matchers output correspondences with a strength that reflects the
confidence they have in the fact that the correspondence between the two entities holds.
These confidence levels are usually derived from similarity assessments made during
the matching process. They are therefore often based on objective grounds.
      </p>
      <p>
        For associating an argument to a strength, which represents the confidence that an
agent has in some correspondence, [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref18">18</xref>
        ] has proposed the strength-based argumentation
framework, extending Bench-Capon’s model:
Definition 5 (Strength-based argumentation framework (SVAF) [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref18">18</xref>
        ]). A SVAF is
a sextuple hA, ⋉, V, v, , si such that hA, ⋉i is an AF, V is a nonempty set of values,
v : A → V, is the preference relation over V (v1 v2 means that, in this framework,
v1 is preferred over v2), and s : A → [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1">0, 1</xref>
        ] represents the strength of the argument.
      </p>
      <p>
        Each audience α is associated with its own argumentation framework in which only
the preference relation α differs. In order to accommodate the notion of strength, the
notion of successful attack is extended:
Definition 6 (Successful attack [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref18">18</xref>
        ]). An argument a ∈ A successfully attacks (or
defeats, noted a†αb) an argument b ∈ A for an audience α iff
a ⋉ b ∧ (s(a) &gt; s(b) ∨ (s(a) = s(b) ∧ v(a)
α v(b)))
Definition 7 (Acceptable argument [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref3">3</xref>
        ]). An argument a ∈ A is acceptable to an
audience α with respect to a set of arguments S, noted acceptableα(a, S), iff ∀x ∈ A,
x†αa ⇒ ∃y ∈ S; y†αx.
      </p>
      <p>In argumentation, a preferred extension represents a consistent position within a
framework, which defends itself against all attacks and cannot be extended without
raising conflicts:
Definition 8 (Preferred extension). A set S of arguments is conflict-free for an
audience α iff ∀a, b ∈ S, ¬(a ⋉ b) ∨ a†αb. A conflict-free set of arguments S is admissible
for an audience α iff ∀a ∈ S, acceptableα(a, S). A set of arguments S in the VAF is a
preferred extension for an audience α iff it is a maximal admissible set (with respect to
set inclusion) for α.</p>
      <p>
        In order to determine preferred extensions with respect to a value ordering promoted
by distinct audiences, objective and subjective acceptance are defined [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref3">3</xref>
        ]. An argument
is subjectively acceptable if and only if it appears in some preferred extension for some
specific audience. An argument is objectively acceptable if and only if it appears in
all preferred extension for every specific audience. We will call objective consolidation
the intersection of objectively acceptable arguments for all audiences and subjective
consolidation the union of subjectively acceptable arguments for all audiences.
3.1
      </p>
      <p>
        Arguments on correspondences
A way of representing correspondences as arguments within an AF is as follows:
Definition 9 (Argument [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref13 ref17">13, 17</xref>
        ]). An argument a ∈ A is a triple a = hc, v, hi, such
that c is a correspondence,v ∈ V is the value of the argument and h is one of
+,depending on whether the argument is that c does or does not hold.
      </p>
      <p>
        The notion of attack is then defined as follow:
Definition 10 (Attack [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref13 ref17">13, 17</xref>
        ]). An argument hc, v, hi ∈
hc′, v′, h′i ∈ A iff c = c′ and h 6= h′.
      </p>
      <p>A attacks an argument</p>
      <p>For instance, if a = hc, v1, +i and b = hc, v2, −i, a ⋉ b and vice-versa (b is the
counter-argument of a, and a is the counter-argument of b).</p>
      <p>
        The way arguments are generated differs in each scenario. The strategy in [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref18">18</xref>
        ],
negative arguments as failure, relies on the assumption that matchers return complete
results. Each possible pair of ontology entities which is not returned by the matcher is
considered to be at risk, and a negative argument is generated (h=-).
      </p>
      <p>In this paper, different matchers argue with each others in order to obtain an
agreement on their alignments. To do this, each matcher is a different audience. The values
in V correspond to the different matching approaches and each matcher m has a
preference ordering m over V such that its preferred values are those it associates to its
arguments. For instance, consider V = {l, s, w}, i.e., lexical, structural and wordnet-based
approaches, respectively, and three matchers ml, ms and mw, using such approaches.
The matcher ml has as preference order l ml s ml w.</p>
      <p>To illustrate the agreement process, consider the alignment A of Figure 1 and two
matchers i and j. Both i and j generate the correspondence (1) and j the correspondence
(2). The following arguments are then created by i and j:
ai,1 : hhPersono, Persono′ , ≡, 1.0i, w, +i
ai,2 : hhDepartmentHeado, Departmento′ , ≡, 0.5i, w, −i
aj,1 : hhPersono, Persono′ , ≡, 1.0i, l, +i
aj,2 : hhDepartmentHeado, Departmento′ , ⊑, 0.8i, l, +i</p>
      <p>After generating their arguments, the matchers exchange their arguments with each
other. The matcher i sends to j its arguments ai,1 and ai,2, and vice-versa. i has a
preference ordering w i l, while j has l j w. Having the complete set of arguments,
the matchers generate their preferred extensions pi and pj . For both pi and pj , the
arguments ai,1, aj,1 and aj,2 are acceptable: ai,1 and aj,1 are not attacked, while aj,2
successfully attacks ai,2 because both arguments have opposite values of h but aj,2
has highest strength than ai,2. So, the set of globally acceptable correspondences, A,
contains both (1) and (2). It is the alignment associated with the objective consolidation.
Definition 11 (Alignment associated with an extension). Given an extension S in a
SV AF , the alignment associated with this extensions is: A(S) = {c; ∃hc, v, +i ∈ S}.</p>
      <p>However, this set is not consistent. Due to the fact that DepartmentHead is
subsumed by Person in o, and Person and Department are disjoint concepts in o′, A is
inconsistent as soon as there exists one Department.
4</p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-4">
      <title>Consistency-driven Argumentation</title>
      <p>
        Resolving the inconsistency problem in alignment agreement has two possible
alternatives: (a) express the inconsistency within the argumentation framework, as in [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1 ref4">1, 4</xref>
        ]; or
(b) deal alternatively with the logical and argumentative parts of the problem.
Integrating the logic within the argumentation framework seems a more elegant solution and it
can be achieved straightforwardly when correspondences are arguments and
incompatible correspondences can mutually attack each others. However, this works only when
two correspondences are incompatible. When the set of incompatible correspondences
is larger, the encoding is not so straightforward and may lead to the generation of an
exponential amount of argument and attacks.
      </p>
      <p>For that purpose, we define the consistency associated with an extension.
Definition 12 (Consistency). An extension S is said consistent iff its associated
alignment A(S) is consistent.</p>
      <p>There are different ways to account for consistency in SVAF. The first one retains
only consistent preferred extensions. However, the set of preferred consistent
extensions may be empty. A fallback would be to consider maximal preferred consistent
sub-extensions.</p>
      <p>Definition 13 (Maximal preferred consistent sub-extensions). A consistent
extension S is a maximal preferred consistent sub-extension iff there exists a preferred
extension S′ such that S ⊆ S′ and ∀S′′; S ⊂ S′′ ⊆ S′, S′′ is not consistent.</p>
      <p>There may be several such sub-extensions. Another approach, considered here, is to
work on consolidations, i.e., the set of objective or subjective arguments.
Definition 14 (Maximal consistent sub-consolidations). A consistent extension S is
a maximal consistent sub-consolidation of an (objective or subjective) consolidation S′
iff S ⊆ S′ and ∀S′′; S ⊂ S′′ ⊆ S′, S′′ is not consistent.</p>
      <p>We propose a consistency-driven protocol that computes the maximal consistent
objective sub-consolidations. The algorithm removes the correspondences that
introduce inconsistencies into the resulting alignment, for maintaining the coherence within
the argumentation system. First, as in Section 3.1, the matchers compute their preferred
extension from which the objective consolidation, O, is obtained. Based on O, the
maximal consistent sub-consolidations is then determined. It can be generalised to consider
subjective consolidation or each preferred extension separately. If the objective
consolidation is consistent, then the algorithm returns it. If not, the maximal consistent
sub-consolidation S is computed.</p>
      <p>
        For computing S we have used the algorithm proposed by [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref14">14</xref>
        ] which identifies the
minimal sets of incoherent correspondences and removes them from the original
alignment. The algorithm is based on the theory of diagnosis, where a diagnosis is formed
by the correspondences with lowest confidence degrees that introduce incoherence in
the alignment. It partially exploits incomplete reasoning techniques to increase runtime
performance, preserving the completeness and optimality of the solution.
      </p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-5">
      <title>Experiments</title>
      <p>Dataset, matchers and argumentation frameworks
The proposed approach is evaluated on a group of alignments from the conference track
of the OAEI1 2009 campaign. The data set consists of 15 ontologies in the domain of
conference organisation. They have been developed within the OntoFarm project2. We
use the subset of these test cases where a reference alignment is available (21
alignments, which corresponds to the alignment between 7 ontologies)3. We focus on
equivalence correspondences, which are taken into account in the reference alignment, and
filter out subsumption correspondences.</p>
      <p>
        We have chosen the alignments generated by the four best matchers that have
participated in the 2009 OAEI conference track [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref7">7</xref>
        ]: AMaker, Aflood, AMext and Asmov.
      </p>
      <p>Each matcher has a SVAF and a private preference order, which is based on
the f–measure ordering for all matchers – AMaker (0.57), Aflood (0.52), AMext
(0.51) and Asmov (0.47). The highest preferred value of each matcher is the value
that it associates to its arguments. For instance, AMaker has as preference ordering:
vamaker amaker vaflood amaker vamext amaker vasmov, while Asmov has the
ordering: vasmov asmov vamaker asmov vaflood asmov vamext.</p>
      <p>For negative arguments (h = −), we use two different strength values. First, we
consider that the strength can vary according to the matcher quality (conformance with
the reference alignment). We assume that this strength is inversely proportional to the
probability that a false positive correspondence is retrieved by the matcher. Such
probability can be measured by the fallout of the alignment A, given the reference alignment
R. Then, we define str for the matcher m:</p>
      <p>| A \ R |
f allout(A, R) = ,
| A |</p>
      <p>strm = 1 − f allout(Am, R)</p>
      <p>Second, we use str=1.0, assuming that matchers strongly reject correspondences
that they do not found (it could be the case when the information about the matcher
quality is not available).
5.2</p>
      <p>Results and discussion
We measure precision and recall of the maximal consistent sub-consolidation, S, with
respect to the reference alignments. First, we present the results from our approach
and next we compare them with the results from each matcher. Figure 2 presents the
results from the objective consolidations, O, and from the maximal consistent
subconsolidation, S, for SVAFs with str = 1 and fallout-based str.</p>
      <p>
        For SVAF with str = 1, argumentation (O) is sufficiently selective for generating
consistent objective consolidations. We obtain high precision but low recall. This
behaviour is due to several reasons. First, we are using objective consolidations and only
1 Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative: http://oaei.ontologymatching.org/
2 http://nb.vse.cz/˜svatek/ontofarm.html
3 As in [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref7">7</xref>
        ], the ontology Iasted is filtered out of our experiments because it causes reasoning
problems when combined with other ontologies. Thus, we have 15 test cases.
arguments present in every preferred extension are considered (what leads to an increase
in precision). Correspondences being accepted by all matchers have high probability to
be consistent. Second, we use str = 1 for negative arguments (h = 1) and thus a true
positive (correct) correspondence with strength lower than 1.0 is successfully attacked
by a false negative correspondence with strength 1.0 (what decreases the recall).
      </p>
      <p>Using fallout-based str (Figure 2), we have an opposite behaviour. Argumentation
is not able to filter out all inconsistent correspondences. We have low precision and high
recall. This occurs because negative arguments are not strong enough for successfully
attacking all positive arguments (including the incorrect ones). As a result, many
correspondences are selected, what increases the probability for selecting inconsistent
correspondences. When applying consistency checking, S, in average, precision slightly
increases, while recall decreases. This effect is due the way the algorithm for removing
the inconsistencies works. An incorrect (but consistent) correspondence might cause
the removal of all conflicting correspondences with lower confidence, and thus some
correct correspondences are filtered out.</p>
      <p>Second, we compare the results from O and S with the results from each matcher.
Figure 2 shows the matcher results with and without consistency checking. In the
majority of the test cases, the precision increases when filtering out the inconsistent
correspondences, while recall decreases (in the case of Aflood, for some tests, the precision
decreases while Amaker maintains its recall). As stated before, this is due to the fact that
some correspondences are incorrect with respect to the reference alignment but
consistent, as well as some correct correspondences are not included in the consistent set
because together with some incorrect (but consistent) correspondences, they introduce
inconsistencies into the set. Asmov is the only system able to check the consistency in
its alignments. In terms of f–measure, apart Asmov, consistency checking improves the
results from Amaker and Amext.</p>
      <p>Comparing the results from SVAFs with the results from each matcher, for str=1
(Figure 2), argumentation outperforms all matchers in terms of precision, but recall is
below all matchers. For fallout-based str, we find an opposite behaviour. All matchers
outperform argumentation in terms of precision, but recall is better with argumentation.
Looking for argumentation and consistency checking together, although consistency
checking slightly improves the precision, both precision and recall are below every
matcher. Consistency or argumentation improves results, while contrary to the intuition,
we do not observe that the combination of both of these provide more improvements.</p>
      <p>Following our (partial) experiments, we can observe that the behaviour of
argumentation highly depends on the strength of the arguments. Argumentation is more
or less selective when using strong or weak strengths for negative arguments,
respectively. Thus, an important issue in the argumentation model is related with the choice
of strengths of negative arguments.</p>
      <p>Using logical consistency checking alone has positive effects in terms of f–measure
for the majority of matchers. On the other hand, combining argumentation and
consistency checking slightly improves the precision, when argumentation is not sufficiently
selective for generating consistent alignments, but in terms of f–measure, this
combination has some negative effects. It is due particularly to the decrease in recall.
6</p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-6">
      <title>Related Work</title>
      <p>
        Few ontology matching systems have been developed using semantic-based techniques.
Examples of systems using some kind of logical verification are S-Match [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref9">9</xref>
        ] and
ASMOV [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref11">11</xref>
        ]. S-Match explores propositional satisfiability techniques (SAT) for
generating correspondences between graph-like structures. ASMOV semantically verifies the
alignments for filtering inconsistencies. However, ASMOV lacks a well defined
alignment semantics and notions as correctness or completeness are thus not applicable [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref14">14</xref>
        ].
      </p>
      <p>
        In the field of alignment agreement based on argumentation, few approaches have
been proposed. In [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref13">13</xref>
        ], Bench-Capon’s model is used to deal with arguments that
support or oppose candidate correspondences between ontologies. Both Bench-Capon’s
and SVAFs frameworks fail at rendering the fact that sources of correspondences often
agree on their results, and that this agreement may be meaningful. [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref10">10</xref>
        ] have adapted
the SVAF in order to consider the level of consensus between the sources of the
correspondences, by introducing the notions of support and voting into the definition of
successful attacks. The work from [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref5">5</xref>
        ] aims at identifying subparts of ontologies which
are sufficient for interpreting messages. This contributes to reduce the consumed time,
at a minimal expense in accuracy.
      </p>
      <p>
        In the field of alignment inconsistency, [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref15">15</xref>
        ] and [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref12">12</xref>
        ] considered correcting
inconsistent alignments. Revision is obtained exclusively by suppressing correspondences
from the alignment through minimising the impact of this suppression. In [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref15">15</xref>
        ], the goal
is to feed the consistent alignment back to a matcher so that it can find new
correspondences. This process can be iterated until an eventual fix-point is reached. Similarly,
[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref16">16</xref>
        ] provides a revision operator by modifying one alignment between two ontologies
such that the result be consistent. Consistency and consequences are given by merging
both ontologies and alignments within the same standard theory. Operators are provided
based on the notion of minimal conflict sets.
7
      </p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-7">
      <title>Concluding Remarks</title>
      <p>We have defined consistency-driven argumentation for alignment agreement. This fills
a gap between argumentation-based matching and consistency-based alignment repairs.
We have experimented our strategy on a set of alignments from expressive ontologies.
The conclusion is that though theoretically grounded, the extra consistency step does
not improve argumentation alone. At least in our experimental setting the argumentation
process is incidentally able to provide near consistent extensions. We have analysed the
features of consistency checking and argumentation which cause this result.</p>
      <p>Hence from these (partial) experiments we can conclude that applying
inconsistency recovery and argumentation independently improves results, while using them
together does not improve significantly the results. If this does not discard the validity
of the approach, it reveals that it should not be applied without care, especially given its
complexity.</p>
      <p>Further study is required to know better in which context matching and
argumentation leads to inconsistency. One source of improvement would be to take into account
several such alignments between several ontologies (a network of ontologies). Indeed,
these could raise inconsistency within networks of ontologies which would have to be
considered as well.</p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-8">
      <title>Acknowledgements References</title>
      <p>We are grateful to Christian Meilicke for letting us use his consistent sub-alignment
software.</p>
    </sec>
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