That is precisely what the ECCMA open Technical Dictionary (eOTD) does. It
provides a central open registry of concepts and their terminology. It also
assigns a public domain identifier. The management of the eOTD is specified
in ISO 22745. Consensus organizations can add new concepts or request that
terms, definitions or images are linked to existing concepts; this requires
the permission of the consensus organization that first registered the
concept. Users can request that concepts be linked (mapped) and again this
is done with the consent of the organizations that registered the concepts.
The eOTD is freely available and currently includes over 400,000 defined
concepts from a wide range of sources in a dozen languages. ISO 22745 now
includes a specification of a web services interface and this is being
implemented as is a log of the search and resolution of concept identifiers
as well as the terms definitions and images. Usage statistics are used to
rank concepts and terminology.
The eOTD concept identifiers are used as metadata to create unambiguously
language independent content.
The foundation of the eOTD is the NATO Codification System but it also
includes the dictionaries provided by ASTM, ASME, ISO and IEC. We only go
looking for terminology at the request of users. The eOTD is widely used
today in many industries. Almost forgot, the eOTD includes units of measure
and currencies, basically all concepts needed to describe individuals,
organizations, locations, goods, services, assets, processes, rules and
regulations. (01)
Peter Benson (02)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Peter F Brown
(Pensive SA)
Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2009 7:13 AM
To: Ontology Summit 2009
Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] URIs for quantities, units and scales (03)
> If you don't do your homework in defining the meaning of any symbols
> at the end of that URI rainbow, it'll just be garbage.
> The GIGO principle for computer systems has not been repealed by the
> Semantic Web. (04)
Agree up to a point. No-one (except W3C...sigh...) is seriously
suggesting that the URI somehow represents the semantics of what it's
pointing to but having URIs maintained by some "authority" can at least
deal with a large part of the tedium that we see coming out of so-called
semantic web technologies, by providing a common handle for talking
about the same thing. Let someone else, or indeed anyone else, go and
create reams of web pages explaining what the thing identified actually
*is* (I've no idea what a ream of web pages would look like however). (05)
By using the same identifier for some thing, whatever different parties
might call it ("avocat" (uid:12345) is the same as "avocado"
(uid:12345), is surely a step forward from having to do painful
inferencing such as "when I use the term 'avocat' in the context of some
French text and discussion about fruit, rather than about the legal
system, it is more likely than not that I mean the same as your English
word 'avocado' rather than 'lawyer'" - we seem to love chewing up lots
of bandwidth with the latter approach, with very dubious results, rather
than - heaven forfend - accepting any authority for issuing an
identifier. (06)
Peter (07)
_________________________________________________________________
Msg Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontology-summit/
Subscribe/Config: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontology-summit/ (08)
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontology-summit-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Community Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/OntologySummit2009/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2009
Community Portal: http://ontolog.cim3.net/ (09)
_________________________________________________________________
Msg Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontology-summit/
Subscribe/Config: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontology-summit/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontology-summit-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Community Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/OntologySummit2009/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2009
Community Portal: http://ontolog.cim3.net/ (010)
|