|
As a complete novice at this, I have
come to the naive conclusion that ontologies need to reflect some
use case in order to make any sense.
My system analyst background says that my way of looking at wine
is going to be a lot different if I am building a cooking site
than it would if I was designing a business system for the LCBO
(Liquor Control Board of Ontario - reputed to be the world's
largest purchaser of wine).
I would think that if my searches are similar to "Give me a list
of wines that go with baked white fish." , I am going to have a
much different view of wines than the product manager at the LCBO
who want to know "Where can I get more wines that are similar to
vintner X's 2009 Premier Cru and can be purchased in quantities in
excess of 3000 bottles?"
Both queries produce a list of white wines (at least I expect it
would) but the gyrations to get each list are going to be
different and I would expect that underlying ontologies to support
the search would be structured quite differently.
Can one actually construct a "wine ontology" that will be equally
meaningful in both contexts? And equally convenient to build and
maintain?
Ron
On 31/05/2013 7:04 AM, William Frank wrote:
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 2:48 AM, doug
foxvog <doug@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Tue, May 28, 2013 20:10, William Frank wrote:
>...
> For example, chardonnay is NOT a type of wine, contrary
to the OWL
> tutorial. Chardonnay is a type of grape, and a wine may
be classified
> according the grapes used to make it, as well as in myrid
other ways.
If wines my be classified according to the types of grapes
used to make
them, why do you object to these "classes" of wines being
called "types"
of wine?
Perhaps what I am saying and what you say about acyclic
directed graphs are close. I also suspect I am missing
something.
I find It much more flexible and requiring less baggage to
treat the huge variety of classification schemes (schemes such
as color, region, etc.) according to which something (such as
Wine) can be classified, and all the classifiers in each
scheme (red, white, burgundy, chardonnay), as themselves part
of the model, and their definitions, at the same level as the
wines themselves. Instead of chardonnay being a 'type' of
wine, if instead we define the wine grape classification
scheme and the classifier chardonnay, as for all x:wine
charadonnay(x) iff (the grapes from which x were made were at
least 50% chardonnay grapes). Then, I would want to say,
this wine **is classified as a* that classifer, Both the
classifier and the thing classified existing at the same
logical level, and in the *is classified as a* being the
logical relation between them.
At the same time, I have found that it is useful to construct
a single, quite shallow natural type hierarchy, easy for
bilogical obects like grapes, and not so hard for some things
like wine, where we can define what it means to be a wine,
(manufacture method), natural wines, fortified wines, perhaps
as the two first nodes. I heard here not long ago that
figuring out what was the right core hierachy for minerals was
not so obvious to all, but many of the other descritors, such
as hardness, I would treat differently. For things like
financial instruments, there is a very shallow hierachy based
on the nature of the obligation and rights involved, while all
the virtually infinite varieties of financial instruments are
better distinquished by the parts they are assembled from, and
the features of those parts. I have found the classifications
of them ineffective if done with multiple types (it becomes
almost like a fine wire mesh), rather than with simple
definitions of what it means, for instance, to be a sushi bond
or a PIK bond. This idea of natural types I do not know how
to easily argue for, though I have seen such arguments that
convinced me. Me, I only find it effective.
I have often criticized the wine tutorial, but i do not find
this to be one
of its problems.
> These are not different 'types" of wine, using the
bilogical analogy for
> taxonomies.
Formal ontology has long since moved past taxonomy trees. It
is
much more useful to use directed acyclic graphs.
> Wine would have only ONE subtype hierachy, based on
> what is essential about wine being wine. (How it is
made).
One valid subtype hierarchy of types of wine is based on the
type of
grape. Another (single level) hierarchy of wine type is by
color. A
third is regional. A regional division of wine types by
vineyard might
be useful at some level of business, but a further division by
vineyard
and grape variety provides a useful disjoint set of types of
wine. This
hierarchy of types can be taken one step further -- by vintage
year.
Of course, if one wishes to use the type concept in this way,
this is right, so I am seeing that my criticism of the wine
tutorial is perhaps misplaced. Perhaps I simply am not happy
with the way the authors of OWL want to use OWL. Perhaps I am
arguing more against official UML semantics, and OWL has
nothing to do with it. For in UML, it seems that they have
striated the world into so many levels each of which requires
a different model, when in fact it is much simpler to consider
the ways we classify things to be things too.
If you could help me get to the bottom of this, I would be
most grateful.
Wm
>> ...
>
> --
> William Frank
>
> 413/376-8167
_________________________________________________________________
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
_________________________________________________________________
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
--
Ron Wheeler
President
Artifact Software Inc
email: rwheeler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
skype: ronaldmwheeler
phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102
|
_________________________________________________________________
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 (01)
|