Probably none when you take into account
that the eOTD registers concepts and their associated terminology, the purpose
of the exercise is to facilitate mapping. I would hate us to lose all of our
legacy data when the new Units Ontology is developed and becomes generally accepted.
There are a lot of units of measure that were developed to meet local, commercial,
or industry requirements and they still work well today. I like the “bolt” as in
a bolt of cloth, it is a reminder to all the engineers out there who immediately
think fasteners that there is another world, it also goes
to show not much dress making is done by engineers J
From: Duane Nickull
[mailto:dnickull@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009
12:54 PM
To: Peter.Benson@xxxxxxxxx; Ontology Summit 2009
Cc: Gerry.Radack@xxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontology-summit]
Progressing a Units Ontology - Now
I wonder how many of these are
redundant if an ontology is introduced and existing UoM mapped to the concepts?
D
On 5/14/09 1:11 AM, "Peter R. Benson" <Peter.Benson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
David and David, last I looked there are 2,632 units of
measure listed in the eOTD would you like an extract (Gerry probably has one
already)?
Peter
David Leal wrote:
Dear David (P),
My previous e-mail was not intended to be negative, but a suggestion on how
to carry things forward - 2 years is "NOW" in standardization :).
The NASA Sweet ontology has always seemed OK to me. ISO 15926-4 has a number
of units used in the process industry, including US units such as the US
Survey Foot for length and acre-foot for volume, which may not be in the
NASA Sweet ontology. Feel free to make use of them.
The amendment to ISO 15926-4 currently out for ballot assigns URIs to these
units. This is not our job, but we have to do it "NOW" in order to
have RDF
implementations of ISO 15926. It is my unease at this ad hoc approach to
units on the web which motivated the proposal for a long term (2 year)
strategy.
Best regards.
David (L)
At 09:46 13/05/2009 +0100, you wrote:
One last try:-)
My original question was about a small subset of units as presented
during the summit F2F that we could focus on as a starter set. The
Subject of this thread is what we might do 'Now' - not in 2-10 years.
The responses suggest that other projects either don't have an immediate
need, already have their own units ontology or are not interested in
doing something common in the short term - I understand that now.
WRT some expert advice : For lack of any ontology related to NIST/OASIS
UnitsML or ISO-land it appears to me I should point the OASIS PLCS TC at
the NASA Sweet Ontology for Units. Anyone done analysis of that and
found any glaring errors?
Cheers,
David
On Tue, 2009-05-12 at 13:03 -0700, Duane Nickull wrote:
This might be a great place to perform some ontology work which would
demonstrate a huge benefit to society. The WCO has major issues
mapping to and from various languages for UoM. For example, in
Japan,
you use a completely different counting system for anything
that is flat. Even thinks in North America
have vastly different
units of measure. Mapping each of these ontology concepts to terms in
various languages would be a huge issue. Think about these units of
measure:
A dozen eggs
A “loaf†of bread, but also has
weight
Apples are not sold each in most places but by aggregate weight
Liquids are sold by volume
Long things are often sold in lengths
Flat things are often sold in square feet or meters
Firewood is sold by volume (chords), processed timber is sold by
units, square feet, length and other measures. They all come from
trees.
...
This list goes on and on.
I bet there would be funding for this type of work.
D
On 5/10/09 12:14 PM, "David Leal" <david.leal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<mailto:david.leal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Dear Henson,
I agree with your comments, but
the terminology is difficult.
See:
ISO 31-0:1992 - Quantities and
units - Part 0 - General
principles, Clause 2.1:
"Physical quantities may
be grouped together into categories
of quantities
which are mutually comparable.
Lengths, diameters, distances,
heights,
wavelengths and so on would
constitute such a category.
Mutually comparable
quantities are called
"quantities of the same kind."
"If a particular example
of a quantity from such a category is
chosen as a
reference quantity called the
<em>unit</em>, then any other
quantity from
this category can be expressed
in terms of this unit, as a
product of this
unit and a number."
>From this I deduce that:
- The length 2.3 m is a
"quantity".
- Length is a "quantities
of the same kind". The synonym
"quantity category"
is also used implicitly used in
the text.
I don't think that the ISO 31-0
terminology is ideal (I do not
know whether
ISO 80000 is the same).
However, it is important to have an
onotology which
uses the same terminology of
the standards from which it is
derived. This is
why it is necessary to have ISO
TC12 on board.
The second paragraph worries me
- this is true for some
"quantities of the
same kind", but not
others. Perhaps after discussion we can
define the
subclass of "quantities of
the same kind" for which this is
true.
Best regards,
David
p.s. I have take the liberty of
cc'ing this to the ontology
summit to see if
the discussion "rings any
bells" with others.
At 11:05 08/05/2009 -0500, you
wrote:
> Dear David,
>This is the beginning of a
good idea. My comments will be a
bit random
>as I have not been thinking
about this lately. However in
answer, I
>believe that length is an
example of what upper ontologies
call a
>Quantity. Length
would be a specialization of quantity.
Quantity is
>what I belive is called a
"reaified" class. Quantities can be
>measured/computed in
various ways using different kinds of
units. I
>believe that a meter is a
unit of length measurement. We have
had a lot
>of discussion of this stuff
which I have forgotten. What I
say may be
>wrong, but perhaps it will
prompt you to take the next shot
at it. I
>believe that
upperontologies use "haslength" as a role that
takes a
>value in the length
quantity space, and haslengthinmeters is
the
>composition of haslenght
and some "coordination function"
defined on the
>quantity which takes
numeric or ordinal values. Let me know
what you
>think
>Regards
>- Henson
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: David Leal [mailto:david.leal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
>Sent: Friday, May 08, 2009
10:52 AM
>To: Graves, Henson; vicki.bailey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: RE: [ontology-summit]
Progressing a Units Ontology -
Now
>
>Dear Henson,
>
>Perhaps we would start with
the statement: "The metre is a
unit of
>length."
>
>1) What sort of thing is
"length"?
>
>2) What sort of things can
have a unit?
>
>3) What does "unit
of" add to the statement "The metre is a
length"?
>
>4) In the statement
"The metre is a length", what does "is a"
mean?
>
>With an agreed answer to
each of these, I think we would be
near a first
>deliverable.
>
>Best regards,
>David
============================================================
David Leal
CAESAR Systems Limited
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Lee, London
SE12 0BS
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