Yes, good idea, Andrea. We do that in our own OWL ontology work, so that either the integration ontology I, consisting of equivalence or sub/superclass relations
between the two ontologies A and B (you can also establish local property restrictions on the mappings if they make sense), simply makes those mappings or imports A & B, then makes those mappings.
We’ve also used this approach to expedite changes more dynamically (we have multiple kinds of software that use those ontologies), given that the individual
ontologies may have distinct ontologists (sometimes in different companies) developing them. We then publish these mappings to the individual integrated ontology developers (A & B), who may choose to incorporate some/all of the integration ontology changes
into their own ontologies directly. Then, when the next versions of ontologies are pushed out, we look at the integration ontologies and the other non-integration ontologies (using ontology-diffing tools, admittedly still relatively primitive), to determine
the changes we need to make to the integration ontologies. Occasionally, it means that the integration ontology can go away, since one of the integrated ontologies has incorporated the changes, rendering the mappings moot.
Thanks,
Leo
From: ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Andrea Westerinen
Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2014 2:07 PM
To: Ontology Summit 2014 discussion
Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] [ReusableContent] Reuse of Linked Data vis-a-vis Reuse of Ontologies
In an offline conversation with TSchneider, I was discussing a possible approach for addressing the modularization vs "inclusive" definition problem (that occurs because you have to import all the related ontologies).
In a recent project, I used the equivalentClass OWL semantic to address the issue. So, for example, in a Person ontology, I defined the Person concept with its relevant properties, but when it came to the Person's Location - that was just
an under-specified Location class (in the Person namespace). I reused a Location ontology (with its own namespace) for a complete definition of that concept. Lastly, I defined an "integrating" ontology that specified the mappings between the concepts. So,
Person:Location would be defined as an equivalentClass to Location:Location.
Obviously, the application covered up all this for the users and my triple store (with reasoner) handled the rest.
That left me with a lot of flexibility for reuse and ontology evolution, and didn't force imports except in my "integrating" ontology. And, each application could have its
own "integrating" ontology.
On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 2:28 PM, Andrea Westerinen <arwesterinen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Elisa,
I do recognize that a lot of work went into FIBO to create smaller, more reusable content. In fact, that was one of the positives that I highlighted in my presentation yesterday [1]. It was straightforward to find concepts and the annotation
was amazing!
But, I did find that for many of the more "advanced" topics, there were imports of most of the FIBO Foundational Ontology. For example, People.rdf imported Organizations (and FormalOrganizations), Locations (and Countries and Addresses),
Goals, etc. So, the more interesting topic ended up being rather "inclusive."
Might there be a way to modularize this even more?
Hi Andrea and all,
I agree wholeheartedly with your suggestions, below. For the work we do at OMG, we are trying very hard to create smaller, reusable ontology "modules" for FIBO, and to make them understandable, not adding any axioms that we can't support for a wide variety
of applications, and not including any that the SMEs can't agree on. We also use a couple of other tests for modularization - whether or not a concept is useful independently, and whether or not its definition might evolve independently, which seem to be
holding up in the testing we've done so far on the early FIBO specifications. Your thoughts on defining axioms based on context are similar to an approach I use for client work with segregating axioms by use case. I wish more practitioners would think along
these lines.
Thanks for weighing in,
Elisa
On 1/24/2014 1:06 PM, Andrea Westerinen wrote:
One of the questions proposed in Track A (Common, Reusable Semantic Content) asks whether the reuse problems
(and perhaps their solutions) are different in the Linked Data and ontology spaces.
Certainly, the uses of the two technologies are different ... as Linked Data is about the "links" and supplying relatively simple semantic annotations and new links ... but ontologies come down to T-boxes (more formal class, relationship
and/or axiomatic definitions) and A-boxes (instance definitions). It is much easier to reuse small, targeted schemas that define Linked Data and various annotations (such as
schema.org) than it is to reuse (typically much larger) foundational or domain-specific ontologies.
In terms of time spent "getting up to speed", small, targeted definitions always win. However, it is also much more likely to be able to do reasoning over (and more complex analysis of) ontologies and A-boxes. And, one can more easily
combine multiple ontologies (for example, with constructs such as OWL's sameAs, differentFrom, disjointWith, ...) than to combine (or reuse) multiple Linked Data schemas. In my experience, I have seen developers typically pick one schema and just stick with
that.
Taking a lesson from the Linked Data world, I would posit that the characteristics that make Linked Data schemas more friendly and reusable could be applied to ontologies. That would argue for:
* Smaller, more modular, targeted ontology fragments
* Separation of semantic (class and relationship) definitions from the axioms that prescribe them
* (Perhaps) Definition of a context in which the axioms apply (and the assumption that there may be more than 1 context and therefore more than one set of axioms)
Another lesson that the ontology world must learn is that the fragments must be vetted, have real uses and sponsors, and not devolve to multitudes of overlapping and (sometimes) contradictory proposals. (I think that the biomed
BioPortal community has done a good job with this.)
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