The key activity to build semantic web is to build ontologies. But today, the theory and methodology of ontology construction is still far from ready. This paper proposed a theoretical framework for massive knowledge management - the knowledge domain framework (KDF), and introduces an integrated development environment (IDE) named large-scale ontology development environment (LODE), which implements the proposed theoretical framework. We also compared LODE with other popular ontology development environments in this paper. The practice of using LODE on management and development of agriculture ontologies shows that knowledge domain framework can handle the development activities of large scale ontologies. Application studies based on the principle of knowledge domain framework and LODE was described briefly.

This paper introduces efforts and achievements of Agriculture Ontology Service Research Group of Agricultural Information Institute of Chinese Academy of Agriculture Sciences in last 10 years. It summarizes the research on ontology construction methodology, ontology management system, ontology application and etc.