ontolog-forum
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [ontolog-forum] Next steps in using ontologies as standards

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: paola.dimaio@xxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 08:11:14 +0700
Message-id: <c09b00eb0901121711l363ad8d2ra815b4ea35afeb7e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Thanks Elisa for further points    (01)

It looks to me that what you describe below, fits the requirement for
one customer, or one class of customers. I do not exclude that
particular requirement you outline below can be bet with a repository,
as it can be met with a schema which produces the desired
functionality irrespective of where the ontology resides.    (02)

If this project has to serve the requirement of your customers, that's
a different story    (03)

But if this project must serve 'universal' requirements, including the
ones that have not yet been specified, of unknown users,  then the LOD
concept is the most open, cause it allows any operation to be carried
out at any level, as defined at query/resoner level    (04)

>From what I understand, an LOD based systems can also combine data (an
ontology) stored in different types of repositories and in different
locations, and I cannot see any limit to the functionality that can be
developed on top of it    (05)

The key notion is 'distributed', which contrasts with centralized.
The 'centralization' of a distributed environment is done at schema level/    (06)

Of course there are issues, but users, say OMG customers, can always
freeze some bits of it and place whatever they want behind a wall and
control it as per their organisational model. Nothing would prevent
anyone from doing such a thing    (07)

It goes without saying that best practices and standards, where
available, have to applied in either case.    (08)

The repository as it is being discussed here, from what I understood
of it, is an enhanced database, somehow ontology repository can become
a bit of an oxymoron, if we consider the context of the open web.    (09)

Requirements of individual customers are very different from universal
requirements of wider groups of web users.    (010)

So maybe one step forward in this debate is identifying the intended
users of this system that Ontolog is trying to satisfy (other than OMG
customers), .....    (011)


:-)    (012)


> As a counter example, we have customers who want to ensure that certain
> ontologies (even "open source" ontologies) that they elect to depend on
> are developed and managed in processes similar to those of typical
> standards bodies.  For instance, at OMG, there is work underway to
> develop an SBVR vocabulary to represent dates and times (in the SBVR/UML
> modeling standard, and based on numerous standards and related papers,
> including Jerry Hobbs' ontology, Pat's catalog, several ISO standards,
> etc.), which we plan to map to OWL. We would like to have a repository
> at OMG to host and manage all of the relevant artifacts together -- the
> documentation, SBVR models, and any additional relevant artifacts,
> including the OWL representation, which will be lossy, but useful
> nonetheless.  We believe that this repository, which we would like to
> make generally searchable, will be an important asset to the broader
> community (OMG members or otherwise).    (013)

sounds good. but does it really depend on 'where' the ontology is
stored? what so    (014)

>
> At our December OMG meeting in Santa Clara, we heard presentations on
> Stanford's BioPortal and Collaborative Protege, as well as on a new
> repository effort at GSA, and will be pulling a wiki together over the
> coming months to develop requirements for building this out.  The
> BioPortal approach is appealing for a number of reasons, particularly to
> those of us who are familiar with Stanford's work.  Other ideas include
> use of a back-end MOF repository, which would allow the UML models to be
> searchable, also very appealing from an OMG perspective.
>
> The repository will be focused on standards produced by the OMG
> community, including potentially vocabularies or ontologies that make
> sense for that community to author and publish, with an emphasis on
> relating all of the relevant artifacts to one another and managing them
> as elements of the standards.  It is not intended to provide a more
> general catalog of ontologies on the web that might be useful, though --
> only those that have been developed through the OMG standards process.
>
> I would argue that as we develop validation/vetting/best practices
> towards developing standard vocabularies at OMG, it may be that those
> processes are more valuable to the community than the repository
> initially, but over time, a well managed repository of standard
> vocabularies whose representational forms include UML models, ODM/OWL
> ontologies, ODM/RDF vocabularies, ODM/CL ontologies, SBVR vocabularies,
> and so forth, will indeed have value to commercial and government
> organizations, especially those who are leery of depending on ontologies
> that have not been evaluated/vetted as rigorously.  They will likely
> only be useful for certain contexts/applications as most models tend to
> be, with potentially lossy mappings among the artifacts, and thus the
> documentation defining the intended context and mapping coverage will
> also be important.  They may also provide the basis for additional
> research, but are likely to be somewhat behind the proverbial research
> curve, by nature.  Those artifacts that would typically live in the web,
> such as RDF vocabularies, OWL ontologies, and XMI documents, will be
> made available through traditional web access methods, but they would be
> managed in the repository with the other relevant model artifacts.
> Mechanisms allowing community input on model utility, enhancement
> requests, and so on are also of interest to us -- inspired by the
> Collaborative Protege presentation.  Unless a particular vocabulary or
> ontology is sponsored by a group of devoted developers, who are
> committed to their user community, and listen and respond to feedback in
> a timely manner, I find it difficult to believe that it will be long
> lived, hanging out on the web on its own.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Elisa
>
> paola.dimaio@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>> John, and all
>>
>> Of course, like many others I am interested, but some questions were
>> posed at the last summit, where some ideas related to the repository
>> project were first asked, and never answered
>> at least not on the public list
>>
>> I remember, for example, that my first reaction to the ideas presented
>> by Mike was
>> 'it is so un-LOD' , meaning:  ontologies live on the web, the web is
>> the natural repository.
>>
>> (ref. my question at the end of  mike dean's presentation on the record)
>>
>> To create 'another' repository would be redundant, unnecessary, a
>> waste of resources and unsustainable. (I am sure the above statement
>> is debatable but in short the above are some key points that have
>> never been discussed)
>>
>> To produce a, say, directory  of all existing ontologies on the web it
>> is essential that each resource owner/administrator produces some uri
>> with some metadata, and updates that (as being discussed in parallel
>> in other lists), and submits it to the directory index
>>
>> A welll maintained directory could be easily used as a knowledge base
>> for individual developers to produce queries, scripts and apis to do
>> what they want with the ontologies, including knitting conceptual and
>> semantic lace from
>>
>> Now, that's probably more realistic 'semantic' view of the repository world
>>
>> Thus, assuming any of the above points is  valid,
>> the repository effort is going to need some serious rethinking
>>
>>
>> pdm
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 3:45 AM, John Graybeal <graybeal@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>> There are existing projects that are geared toward meeting both these
>>> goals, are there not?  Many that are putting forth semantic wikis (for
>>> the purpose of defining semantic concepts in a wiki-like way) and a
>>> few projects that are targeted (broadly) at a more formal ontology
>>> presentation space for community ontologies.
>>>
>>> I don't have examples of the first in hand (many are known), but in
>>> the second we are describing Knoodl (Revelytix), NeOn's work, and the
>>> (early stage discussions) Open Ontology Repository project (by Ontolog
>>> group, previously mentioned in the thread). The last is noteworthy
>>> because many requirements have been defined in public pages.
>>>
>>> I ask because I'm not sure why this group is devoting time discussing
>>> design of a system, when the interested parties might instead agree on
>>> basic goals, pick a system, and start work?  Or else I am missing
>>> something.
>>>
>>> John
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jan 12, 2009, at 6:58 AM, Ron Wheeler wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> I would suggest a 2 pronged approach. The formal ontology repository
>>>> should have a proper governance structure and peer review by whatever
>>>> body is setup to do that.
>>>>
>>>> The wiki should be more like Wikipedia with the emphasis on collecting
>>>> ontologies and building up a set of documentation about each one,
>>>> comments from users, links to compatible ontologies, links to
>>>> alternatives and comments from reviewers regardless of their
>>>> "officialness".
>>>>
>>>> The formal repository governing body should find this a useful
>>>> resource
>>>> both as a source of candidate ontologies and as a source of potential
>>>> SMEs and reviewers. It will also identify topics and ideas that the
>>>> official reviewers may want to include in their analysis.
>>>>
>>>> The less bureaucracy in the wiki, the better. It has worked very well
>>>> for Wikipedia.
>>>> I doubt if we would have more vandalism than Wikipedia does,
>>>> although we
>>>> do get some heated discussion here.
>>>> If it does become a problem, the easiest way to fix that is by
>>>> requiring
>>>> people to get permission to have access to writing.
>>>> Wikipedia has not had to resort to that and they draw from a much
>>>> wider
>>>> audience with all kinds of commercial and competitive interests.
>>>>
>>>> Ron
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> John F. Sowa wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Azamat and Ron,
>>>>>
>>>>> There are two separate issues:
>>>>>
>>>>>  1. Developing the ground rules and policies for an ontology
>>>>>     registry.
>>>>>
>>>>>  2. Setting up a registry and maintaining the contributed ontologies.
>>>>>
>>>>> These two goals can be pursued in parallel, but #1 should be started
>>>>> first.  Then an implementation, #2, would give us further experience
>>>>> and ideas about how to develop #1 further.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>> _________________________________________________________________
>>> Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
>>> Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
>>> Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
>>> Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
>>> To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
>>> To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _________________________________________________________________
>> Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
>> Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
>> Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
>> Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
>> To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
>> To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
> Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
> Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
> Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
> To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
> To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>    (015)

_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/  
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/  
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/ 
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx    (016)

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>