The semantic web is envisioned as an evolving set of local ontologies that are gradually linked together into a global knowledge network. Many such local "application" ontologies are being built, but it is difficult to link them together because of incompatibilities and lack of adherence to ontology standards. "Reference" ontologies are an emerging ontology type that attempt to represent deep knowledge of basic science in a principled way that allows them to be re-used in multiple ways, just as the basic sciences are re-used in clinical applications. As such they have the potential to be a foundation for the semantic web if methods can be developed for deriving application ontologies from them. We describe a computational framework for this purpose that is generalized from the database concept of "views", and describe the research issues that must be solved to implement such a framework. We argue that the development of such a framework is becoming increasingly feasible due to a convergence of advances in several fields.