The ontology of merging information subsystems: principles and examples

The article is devoted to the issues of merging ontologies. These ontologies are used in the design of subsystems included in the corporate information system. This problem arises when it is necessary to build a united ontology for the design of information systems in the process of integrating various information solutions, as well as in the step-by-step design of a corporate information system created by different developers in different times. It is assumed that ontologies are built based on the same principles and on the basis of one thesaurus. But nevertheless, the task of a merged ontology may have significant difficulties in combining different ontologies that describe different subsystems of an enterprise. The authors investigated the formal determination of the possibility to merge ontologies without their preliminary revision. The article proposes a criterion for the possibility of merging. The method based on expert opinions for calculating the criterion is proposed. Various examples of merging different ontologies with the calculation of the proposed criterion are also considered. The novelty of the presented material lies in developing the principle and criterion for merging ontologies and a methodology for the application of this criterion.