Re: [ontology-summit] Ontology of ontology

[AJ Chen <ajchen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In order to find ways to classify or describe ontologies more clearly for the purpose of comparison/reuse, it would be good to look into some real world examples of problems that people have encountered before. This will help us understand the conceptual discussion going on at the same time.

When I first started to design an ontology for self-publishing of experiment data (SPE), I had gone through the exact problem that this forum is trying to solve or ease. The requirement was to provide ontology classes and properties to describe experiment and related information, including experiment, researcher, group, organization, protocol, publication, etc. The ontology should be a shallow one so that it can be used for any research. Of cource, I wanted to reuse existing ontologies as much as possible. So, I surveyed almost all of the well-known ontologies, some for more common objects like people and publication and others for deep scientific domain knowledge (gene, functional genomics). Unfortunately, I ended up to redefine everything except for a few common terms from dublin core.

So, the problem was that I wasn't able to reuse the existing ontologies to the extend I wished for. I could be because of me. But, I hope this forum could come up with some ways (guides or tools) to help people evolve their ontologies for better reusability.

AJ
--
AJ Chen, PhD
http://www.web2express.org
"Open Data on Semantic Web"

Quoting "Denny, Michael" <dennym@xxxxxxx>:

> Coming late to this dialog, I am wondering if it has already been
> suggested that the group take on the project of constructing a domain
> ontology of ontology to specify formally what it believes constitutes
> and differentiates ontologies. As a possible direction, I can imagine
> such an effort would help pin down, converge and organize the diverse
> sentiments of the group and, at the same time, encourage us to practice
> what we preach. For example, the group might begin such an undertaking
> by choosing to restrict the ontology domain to computational ontology as
> that breed of ontology that is expressly machine readable and intended
> to be used in computing systems. Such a domain restriction should serve
> not to exclude factors of philosophical ontology as much as specifically
> include factors of computability like language expressivity, language
> and vocabulary mapping, logic computing, data typing, algorithms for
> interpretation, and instance storage and serialization features.
> Further, the topical nature of the ontology in terms of its domain
> boundaries and level of focus, its mission (or characteristic queries),
> and its relation to other bounded domains provides a candidate third leg
> for this ontology of ontology device.
>
>
>
> Possible beginnings of an ontology of ontology exist at
> http://www.charlestoncore.org/ont/2005/08/o3.html thanks to Xiaoshu
> Wang, and at
> http://km.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/ws/eon2006/eon2006gangemietal.pdf thanks
> to Aldo Gangemi et al, and I am sure elsewhere.
>
>
>
> Now, the hard part, of course, will be deciding the kind of ontology an
> ontology of ontology should be. Whatever form it takes, however, I
> suspect it would represent a tangible contribution to the ontology
> community.
>
>
>
> Mike
>
>
>
> ==========================
>
> Michael Denny, Ph.D.
>
> Principal Ontologist
>
> Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC)
>
> 100 CTC Drive
>
> Johnstown, PA 15904
>
> Phone: (814) 248-7518 Mobile: (814) 322-8721
>
> Email: dennym@xxxxxxxxxx URL: www.ctc.com
>
> ==========================
>
>
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