Dear David (P), (01)
I agree that it is important to make progres on this NOW. (02)
Objective
---------
The key problems are authority and terminology. A small group of ontology
experts can get together to:
1) guess what the terminology in the ISO 80000 series (successor to ISO 1000
and ISO 31) "really means"; and
2) create an ontology on that basis.
This will have very little impact, except on the projects within which the
ontology experts themselves are involved. (03)
The key task is to involve the metrology domain experts within ISO TC12, so
that the ontology "is" what the terminology of the ISO 80000 series really
means. The result would then have far more impact - a new part (perhaps)
within the ISO 80000 series and a W3C recommendation. Once this has been
achieved, the representation of units (and related concepts such as
quantities and scales) will be on a firm basis. You will then have to have a
very good reason not to use the result. (04)
What next
---------
The W3C Product Modelling XG made initial with ISO TC12 last year. Because
the issue was so large, it was passed to ISO Central Secretariat and I think
that it is now (metaphorically) sitting on Howard Mason's desk as chair of
ISO TC184/SC4. (05)
Perhaps the way to kick this off is for ISO TC184/SC4 to make a formal
approach to ISO TC12 to work jointly on the issue with W3C and others. The
issue may warrant a one day physical meeting, at ISO in Geneva or at NIST
(say), to define scope, objectives, procedures, etc.. Thereafter we have the
"telecons, Web meetings, etc." to actually do the work. (06)
Howard: Would a resolution of ISO TC184/SC4 in Vancouver later this month,
and the adoption of the draft scope document based upon the one circulated
earlier, be a useful starting point. (07)
Best regards,
David (L) (08)
p.s. On sources
---------------
A key source for an ontology for units is still "An Ontology for Engineering
Mathematics", Gruber and Olsen 1994 -
http://ksl.stanford.edu/knowledge-sharing/papers/engmath.html. (09)
Work on units also needs to consider:
1) the W3C Product Modelling XG work, which is on its wiki (This work
involved dicussions with those who think of units in terms of concrete
datatypes and wish to add these into OWL);
2) the work on units within the MathML community. (010)
At 12:09 07/05/2009 +0100, you wrote:
>All,
>
>As part of the ballot comment resolution on OASIS PLCS Public Review Draft 1
>[1] we have a requiremend to publish support for SI units in an OWL DL
>ontology for use as "reference data" in the next couple of months. I've taken
>the action in that project to follow up on the idea of a Units ontology that
>was discussed during the summit. The "reference data" use case does not
>depend on interesting inferences to be made using the ontology, source system
>statements encoded in an exchange file that are then decoded by a target
>system are all that we require today.
>
>While searching the Web I found email threads on this topic from 2006 and
>2007, some of which included me, and there's no visible progress on units 2-3
>years later. The PLCS team recognises that a full solution isn't feasible in
>a couple of months, but do need to push something through as a starting point
>that people can use in their implementations. We do recognize that things may
>change over the next few years, but simply cannot wait any longer.
>
>We also plan to use the resulting units ontology with the ISO AP233 Systems
>Engineering [3] standard for the same "reference data" purposes, so the
>ontology will also be visible in the OMG as well where it will be referenced
>in the SysML/AP233 mapping specification [4].
>
>We've been reviewing the NASA Sweet Units Ontology V1.1 [2] and would like
>comments on that as a potential starting point - at least we know it's been
>used on real engineering projects and have AP233 team members from NASA.
>Clearly the NIST UnitsML [5] work is related, but is not an ontology. I've
>seen emails threads about ontology work based on UnitsML but nothing
>published.
>
>So, my questions are:
>
>Anyone with recommendations other than Sweet as a starting point ontology
>(e.g. is there a UnitsML ontology somewhere) ?
>
>Anyone interested in, or know of anyone else interested in, working to an
>interim conlcusion on this topic over the next couple of months?
>
>I'm quite happy to set up telecons, Web meetings, etc. in support of
>progressing this topic. Of course, we're also happy if Ontolog, W3C or anyone
>else wants to support this initiative as well.
>
>Cheers,
>David
>
>[1] http://docs.oasis-open.org/plcs/dexlib/oasis_cover.htm
>[2] http://sweet.jpl.nasa.gov/ontology/
>[3] http://www.ap233.org/
>[4] http://www.omgwiki.org/OMGSysML/doku.php
>[5] http://unitsml.nist.gov/
>
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============================================================
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