Re: [ontolog-forum] is-part-of: a really, really, bad practice?

[William Frank <williamf.frank@xxxxxxxxx>]

The goal of elimintating domain specific relationships in an ontology is 

to ***nominalize or reify*** all the domain-specific relations, along with everything else that is of substance to the ontology, so that every concept we want to model is on an equal footing with all the others,

and to ****separate*** these domain specific relationship concepts from the logical underpinnings of the language.

Just as John Sowa does in a related response.

Use *nouns*, not relations, for domain specific relationships

'sisterhood'

not 

'is the sister of'

Mary is the sister of John

becomes 

Sisterhood has the role of  being sister
Sisterhood has the role of has-sister

there is a sisterhood in which 
Mary plays the role of being sister
John plays the role of has-sister

This does not *diminish* the importance of domain specific relationships, it rather *increases* their importance and the richness with which they can be analysed. 

it also puts sisterhood, personhood,  height, weight, childhood (mary is the child of susan and george) all on the same footing.   They are all predicates.  The fact that each of these take a different number of arguments is secondary.  Attributes, similarly, like height and weight, are now also things that are not burried inside 'entities', they are first class citizens of the domain ontology, just as are childhood and personhood.   

Using this approach to describe a domain onltology is is more neutral as to the solution language, be it an E/R or equivelentiny entity-attribute-relationship based OO programming language, or a functional language.  It removes the impedence mismatch between relational databases and columnar databases, by providing a deep structure applicable to both. 

Using this approach separates issues concerning logical underpinnings on the ontology, 

such as 

part of 
is described by
is a kind of 
equals



complex and domain problematic as they may be,

from the domain specific concepts



catalyst

catalyst has the role conversion catalyzed

catalyst has the role caltylizer

there is a catalyst such that 
MTHFR plays the catylizer role in that catalyst


the logical particles are the only things that show up as 'lines', which are thereby diminished 
in our ability to make assertions about them. Everything domain specific
 is in a BOX, putting the needed spotlight right on it.

Mathew Lenge

On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 1:02 AM, matthew lange <mclange@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

MatthewLange ||   has less ontology experience than ||  most active ontolog list subscribers
MatthewLange ||   inclined to believe  ||  "ontology relations should be derived from the most common phrase in ordinary language"
"ontology relations should be derived from the most common phrase in ordinary language"  || has author  || JohnSowa
MatthewLange ||   does not understand the goal(s) of   ||    "relationships that are devoid of domain specific content"
"relationships that are devoid of domain specific content" ||   has example  || "plays the role of in"
"relationships that are devoid of domain specific content" ||   has author     || WilliamFrank
MatthewLange ||  likes  ||  bioinformatics
Bioinformatics || requires || "domain-specific relationships"
"domain specific relationships" || has example ||  "catalyzes chemical conversion of"
"catalyzes chemical conversion of" || is verb phrase of   ||  "MTHFR catalyzes chemical conversion of 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate to  5-methyltetrahydrofolate"

MatthewLange  || wonders  ||  "what am I missing?"
MatthewLange  || hopes      ||  "others will model these phrases differently"
MatthewLange  || especially hopes  ||  "Frank will model these phrases with his relations"

On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 8:30 PM, John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 5/19/2013 5:17 PM, jmcclure@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> I argue the industry badly needs consensus about the best practice
> for how attributes/relations are to be named.

My recommendation is to use the most common phrase in ordinary language.

> in "old style" systems these names are nouns, perhaps qualified nouns;
> in "new style" systems these names are, uh, something other than a noun.

In ordinary English, it's common practice is to represent relations
with nouns.  The syntax of English and other languages allows verbs
and adjectives to be *nominalized* in order to refer to the relations:

"The Romans destroyed Carthage in 146 BC"  =>
     "The destruction of Carthage by the Romans in 146 BC"

"The book is easy to read" =>
     "The ease of reading the book"

For words like part and family relations like mother, child, sibling,
uncle, etc., there are no obvious verbs.  It's more convenient to use
noun + 'of'.  In fact, English syntax makes it easy to switch 'of'
to 'has' in order to form inverses:

"X is the father of Y"  =>  "Y has a father X"  (or has X as father).

"X is a part of Y"  =>  "Y has a part X"

The nominal form is easy to modify as needed:

"X is a proper part of Y"  =>  "Y has a proper part X"

"X is an only child of Y and Z"  =>  "Y and Z have an only child X"

This seems like a good argument for using nouns to name relations.

John

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-- 
William Frank

413/376-8167


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