Collaborative Research: TANGO: Table Analysis for Semiautomatic Generation of Ontologies

这个名为“TANGO”的合作项目是利用杨百翰大学（IIS 0414644, PI: David Embley）和伦斯勒理工学院（IIS 0414854, PI: George Nagy）的研究团队的优势。TANGO是一个框架，用于组织出现在独立生成的网页中的特定领域的事实数据。算法和软件被开发出来，用于提取和解释单个列表和表，并将它们与呈现部分重叠信息的其他表的内容集成。输入页面可以是HTML、PDF、PostScript或扫描的文档图像文件。系统的输出是一个本体，它为领域提供了概念框架。本体随着带有附加相关数据的网页的收集和处理而发展。构建本体目前是一个劳动和技能密集型的过程。当信息存在于描述该领域的列表和表中时，TANGO框架会自动执行该领域的大部分本体构建任务。这个项目的成果构建了通往语义Web的垫脚石，而本体是语义Web的核心组件。因此，这个项目将对语义网的用户产生影响，在这个项目中开发的自动化软件代理的帮助下，他们可以完成基于信息的研究、奖学金、规划、设计、教育和娱乐任务。这项跨学科和跨大学的努力向研究生和本科生介绍了前沿研究。开发的工具（包括源程序）、原始和规范化形式的表格语料库、收集的测试数据和技术报告可以在项目网站（http://www.tango.byu.edu）上找到。

This collaborative project "TANGO" is leveraging strengths of research teams at Brigham Young University (IIS-0414644, PI: David Embley) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (IIS 0414854, PI: George Nagy). TANGO is a framework for organizing domain-specific factual data appearing in independently generated web pages. Algorithms and software are developed for extracting and interpreting individual lists and tables and integrating them with the contents of other tables that present partially overlapping information. The input pages may be HTML, PDF, PostScript, or scanned document image files. The output of the system is an ontology that provides the conceptual framework for the domain. The ontology evolves as web pages with additional relevant data are harvested and processed. Constructing ontologies is currently a labor and skill intensive process. The TANGO framework automates much of the ontology construction task for a domain when information exists in lists and tables that describe the domain. The results of this project build stepping stones to the Semantic Web, for which ontologies are a central component. Therefore, this project will have an impact on users of the Semantic Web, who assisted by the automated software agents developed in this project, can accomplish information-based tasks for research, scholarship, planning, design, education, and entertainment. This cross-disciplinary and cross-university endeavor introduces graduate and undergraduate students to cutting-edge research. Developed tools (including source programs), a corpus of tables both in raw and normalized forms, collected test data, and technical reports can be found at the project website (http://www.tango.byu.edu).