Combining Global and Local Ontology Handling in a Multiagent System

Ontologic knowledge is getting more and more important iagent-based systems, and its handling is becoming cruciafor successful applications. But placing all the ontologyhandling capabilities in each of the system’s agents coulmake them too heavy. We propose a combination of locaand global ontology handling, where part of the ontology ihandled locally, using a “client component”, and the rest othe ontological knowledge is handled by an “ontology agent”which is accessed by the other agents in the system througtheir client component. We propose specific methods for representing, storing, querying and translating ontologies for effective use in the context of the “JITIK” system, which is multiagent system for knowledge and information distribution. We report a working prototype implementing our proposal.