Managing Personal Data with an Ontology
Nowadays, our personal computer contains a huge amount of information, that is stored in several different formats. When looking for an information, one possibility is to use a keyword-based search tool. However, this kind of tool has several well-known limitations. In this paper we propose a framework for Personal Information Management, called OntoPIM, that relies on the use of a Personal Ontology, to assign a semantics to the information contained in the user desktop, as well as to query the system. In particular, by the use of the Semantic Save, it provides the user the possibility to store any object of interest according to its semantics, i.e. to relate it to the concepts of the Personal Ontology, where an object may be a mail, a document, a picture, or any other type of data. Then, the user is given the possibility to query the Personal Ontology, whereas the system carries out the task of suitably invoking the wrappers, processing the query, identifying different instances of the same concept, and finally assembling the data into the final answer.