OxO2 -- A SSSOM mapping browser for logically sound crosswalks

TL;DR

OxO2 is an improved ontology mapping tool that ensures logical soundness, provenance tracking, and stability, enabling more reliable integration of datasets annotated with different ontologies.

Contribution

This paper introduces OxO2, a new version of the mapping browser that incorporates SSSOM standards and a Datalog engine to improve logical soundness and provenance tracking.

Findings

Enhanced logical soundness of mappings

Improved provenance information with SSSOM

Stable and efficient performance for all requests

Abstract

EMBL-EBI created OxO to enable users to map between datasets that are annotated with different ontologies. Mappings identified by the first version of OxO were not necessarily logically sound, lacked important provenance information such as author and reviewer, and could timeout or crash for certain requests. In this paper we introduce OxO2 to address these concerns. Provenance is addressed by implementing SSSOM, a mapping standard that defines provenance for mappings. SSSOM defines the conditions under which logical sound mappings can be derived and is implemented in OxO2 using Nemo, a Datalog rule engine. To ensure reasoning is performant and memory efficient, Nemo implements a number of strategies that ensures OxO2 will be stable for all requests. Due to these changes, OxO2 users will be able to integrate between disparate datasets with greater confidence.