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Re: [ontology-summit] Official Communique Feedback Thread

To: Ontology Summit 2011 discussion <ontology-summit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Barry Smith <phismith@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:07:42 -0400
Message-id: <BANLkTimXxfa1u7LY1mNnPD=A0=7e4PYS8w@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>


On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 2:35 PM, Alexander Garcia Castro <alexgarciac@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Barry Smith: Too many ontologies are creating semantic silios, we need only one ontology per domain, and can only afford one."

Did he say that? "one ontology per domain"? I dont like that idea; also, it seems unpractical.

It is already being put into practice in the biomedical domain: 
see also:

what if the ontology does not cover the domain in the way u need it?

The developers of the OBO Foundry ontologies commit to collaborate with their users and to work with them to extend the OBO Foundry ontologies when needed ; all of these Foundry ontology development efforts have term request trackers for this purpose. 
 
it happens very often that u need to extend existing ontologies, it also happens that such extensions involve the definition of several axioms, rules and at the end u get a significantly different ontology -a violation to the one ontology and one ontology only. 

For this approach to work, the extension has of course to be done carefully, and in a coordinated fashion. The fact that people violate the one-ontology-per-domain principle seems not to be an argument against this principle.
 
if you consider the upper level ontologies (BFO, DOLCE), so should we all stick to one of them and support one of them only?

At the point where one of them has demonstrated that it is good enough for this purpose, yes. And I think the developers of these ontologies would be ready to accept the needed merger (I think this is true of the BFO and DOLCE developers, for instance).

also impractical. not to mention that upper level ontologies like BFO and the like are not always used when developing ontologies -in some papers the actual need for such ontologies has been discussed. 

Do you have examples of major cross-disciplinary practical success in integration which do not involve some upper-level ontology?
 
What about the representation language?  should it also be "one language only"? if this is the case, also unpractical.  

One day we will, I hope, know which language to use. (Just as we know which language to use for arithmetic.) When that stage is reached everyone intending to do sensible ontology work will, surely, be likely to use the common representation language.
 
silos, sure there are silos. but having one single ontology does not solve the problem. actually IMHO it does not solve anything. it could probably be a good idea to address the issue of interoperability across ontologies rather than pretending to have " one ontology per domain". 

Who will keep the N-squared mappings up to date, for an N that is increasing, if AGC gets his way, without limit? Who will pay for this ever increasing mapping effort? Who will oversee the mapping effort? 
BS 
 
On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 8:42 AM, Brand Niemann <bniemann@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Introduction

 

I am Brand Niemann, Semantic Community, and recently completed 30 years of federal services at the US EPA as senior enterprise architect and data science. I am interested in the role of ontology in semantic interoperability and the application of semantic interoperability to major applications like Federal Cloud Computing, Enterprise Architecture and SOA, and Knowledge Management and Computational Journalism. Mills Davis and I are restarting the Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice (SICoP) and are trying to do at least one activity each month – please see our Events Calendar at http://semanticommunity.info/#Events_Calendar . We look forward to collaborating with you.

 

Comments During the First Morning

 

There are two simple concepts expressed during presentations by the two major government-funded ontology programs (EU and US JPDO) that I have yet to hear mentioned as follows:

 

1.Ontolog Forum, March 17th, Perspective from the European Commission

SteveRay: Ah - good quote: "The need comes first, ontologies come later"

See Chat Log: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2011_03_17#nid2QHC

 

2. Ontology Driven Implementation of Semantic Services for the Enterprise Environment (ODISSEE) Workshop, April 19, 2011

 

Barry Smith: Too many ontologies are creating semantic silios, we need only one ontology per domain, and can only afford one.

 

See: http://semanticommunity.info/Build_TOGAF_in_the_Cloud#Ontology_Driven_Implementation_of_Semantic_Services.c2.a0for_the_Enterprise_Environment_(ODISSEE)_Workshop

and specifically Barry Smith at http://semanticommunity.info/Build_TOGAF_in_the_Cloud#Barry_Smith

 

and the summary slides I sent previously at http://semanticommunity.info/@api/deki/files/10494/=BrandNiemann04142011.pptx  

 

So there are questions of sequencing and number of ontologies that need to be addressed.

 

Grand Challenges

I think the Ontology Community should engage in Challenges and Competitions (not the Grand Challenge) especially say for health data. I have participated in three so far and have not seen any using ontology – see http://semanticommunity.info/Build_the_Health_Data_Infrastructure_in_the_Cloud

 

Brand



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