**2. Importance of applying ontology in industrial sector**

Our objective here is thus to contribute to a better knowledge retrieval in the industry repositories field. Ontologies are being developed to facilitate knowledge sharing and reuse. In this section, we explain more formally what ontologies are and what problems can arise from knowledge sharing in industrial area. We have proposed a method to efficiently search the target information on a digital repository network with multiple independent information sources [13]. The use of AI and ontologies as a knowledge representation formalism offers many advantages in information retrieval [14]. In this chapter we analyzed the relationship between both factors ontologies and expert systems.

Currently, the electronic search is based mainly on matching keywords introduced by the users with sought data Web pages containing those keywords. The ambiguity of word blends and phrases and the poor linguistic features of Web content indexing mechanisms greatly affect the results obtained from Web resource searches. The efficiency of the results search obtained can vary depending on the quality of the search query from a limited set of results to a too large number of irrelevant results. For certain cases specifying a couple of keywords can be enough, if they are really specific and no ambiguity is possible. In another way, many Web users search for information that cannot be described easily by a set of keywords, and this is due to the wideness of expected results, which cannot be retrieved from existing search engines just with one search query [15].

Industrial repositories contain a large volume of digital information, generally focusing on making their knowledge resources to improve associate decision-support systems. Within a pool of heterogeneous and distributed information resources, users take site-by-site searching. Thus, considerable effort is required in creating meaningful metadata, organizing and annotating digital documents, and making them accessible. The presentation of semanticenabled resources introduces some benefits of the Semantic Web technology as a possibility to perform a semantic search, integration of heterogeneous data, and use of semantically annotated search results by software. This work concerns applications of the Semantic Web technology for improving existing information search systems by adding semantically enabled extensions that enhance information retrieval from information systems.

A recent comprehensive document covering the main aspects of ontologies in AI research is the technical roadmap of the ontology field in Europe and worldwide produced by the OntoWeb project [16]. In this chapter, we want to emphasize that the first step toward real portability between systems is ontologies. Ontologies can be effectively used to address the problem of global and general models construction between similar domains. Furthermore, it is possible to instantiate and adapt ontology with a specific configuration to automatically build and validate new models [17]. With respect to the research involved in this study, ontologies can provide:


The proposal is based on the principle that information items are abstracted to a characterization by introducing metadata, which is used and processed by search engines. This principle is based on a vocabulary/ontology that is shared in order to access the relevant sources of information. This creates new challenges for the research community and motivates scientists to look a recovery approach based on ontologies and intelligent information that automatically search and filter information based on a higher level of understanding required. In this sense, in the present work, we make an effort of investigating techniques that use ontologies to improve the effectiveness in knowledge retrieval. Thus, ontologies are key elements for the definition of the semantic Web [18].

To achieve these objectives, we must consider the interoperability of information. In other words, the ability of different information systems, platforms, and services to share, communicate, and exchange data, information and knowledge effectively and accurately, as well as integrate with other systems, applications, and services in order to deliver new electronic services and products.

Initiatives in this sense such as interoperability between different industrial domains require the establishment of collaborative semantic repositories between private and public sector organizations. Especially, semantic interoperability is necessary, which has a special relevance within the program to support the implementation of distributed services.
