Re: [ontology-summit] [ReusableContent] Partitioning the problem

[John McClure <jmcclure@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Simon - thanks for the reply, off and running to see my Hawks methodically deconstruct the Broncs offense/defense.
/jmc

On 2/2/2014 12:49 PM, Simon Spero wrote:

On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 2:14 PM, John McClure <jmcclure@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Dear Mike,
I guess you'd use skos:broaderTransitive instead of rdfs:subClassOf? And no, SKOS is hardly 'pretty standard'. And yes, every noun/synset IS a concept, some equivalent with others; my friend it's gotta be unsupportable to say otherwise.
/jmc

1. SKOS is a full W3 Recommendation.  It is, however, not pretty.

Every day I use and support SKOS, even within classes, but I don't support using skos labels or skos noation as a substitute for assigning URLs to language-specific classes or properties -- that doesnt solve the problem at hand. Requiring query engines to support anything beyond the RDF is quixotic imho. I want practical answers to practical problems!

2. The domain of the SKOS label properties is unrestricted.

Again, I have no problem with such skos-identified info attached to classes, welcome them and use them. I have a problem as that being the only mechanism for dealing with opaque class and property names like R45678 -- way too arcane for queries, fine for inventories of classes and properties, but unreasonable for queries.

3. The domain and range of  the skos:broaderTransitive relationship is restricted to skos:Concept.

From SKOS Primer:

Summarizing, the relationship between SKOS concepts and OWL classes/individuals is as follows:

• SKOS concepts are OWL individuals;
• SKOS does not take a stance on whether it must also be possible to treat SKOS concepts as OWL classes;
• The restrictions on OWL-DL prevent treating SKOS concepts as OWL classes;
• There is an expectation that an ongoing OWL revision will alleviate the latter problem by offering some form of metamodeling.

4. Concepts in Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) are intentional. Their extensions are the set of documents about  the Concept.

5. The Broader Term relationship in a KOS applies if a document about the narrower concept must always also in some sense be about a the broader concept.  BT is transitive across partitive and generic relationships. 

   S2000 Steering Wheel BT(P)  S2000

   S2000 BT(G) Car 

   --------------------------------------------

   S2000 Steering Wheel BT Car 

But

   S2000SteeringWheel partOf S2000

   S2000 subClassOf Car

  ------------------/--------------------------

   S2000SteeringWheel subClassOf Car

Cmon, partative applies here to extensions not to parts of a car.

6.  The statement "every noun/synset IS a concept" is either trivially true, or false. 

6.1.  It is trivially true in the sense that every word can have something that is about it.

The issue is whether the class so named has any individuals within its extension, hardly a trivial statement.

6.2.  Otherwise it is a confusion of use and mention.

No idea the distinction you make here.

Simon 

On 2/2/2014 10:45 AM, Mike Bennett wrote:

I would definitely recommend using SKOS for all the notations.

Since most of these are pretty standard, this would also mean that (per Amanda's suggestion on an adjacent thread), it would be possible to develop tools which for example always look to SKOS Definition for the definition, always look to prefLabel for the label you see on a diagram, and so on.

And I certainly recommend being clear about whether the model you are developing is a model of words (with one OWL class per word) or a model of concepts (with maximum one OWL class per unique concept).

And I don't regard the use of the word "semantic" as short-hand for "something not worth doing". Semantics is why we are here.

Mike

On 02/02/2014 17:24, John McClure wrote:

Dear Simon and Mike,

Good observations - let's use owl:equivalentClass and owl:equivalentProperty then. (And oops: it's OWL-Full to use sameAs for classes and properties).

I don't agree with what I think of as semantic hair-splitting the complaint that this method connotes a vocabulary though. All sorts of crap can be found in rdfs:labels, by extension skos labels. So I'd not want tools to rely on them for anything normative. If you think there's a better way (skos:notation?) than labels or equivalencies, bring it on.

Otherwise let's agree that the method I've put forth is a recommended best practice. I mean, that's what we're supposed to be doing here, recommending specific best practices - what is your counter-proposal please for this very practical problem of queries using opaque IRIs?

/jmc

On 2/2/2014 8:55 AM, Simon Spero wrote:

An even bigger problem is that owl:sameAs is unlikely to won't work the way in the way that is desired, especially under the OWL 2-DL  Direct Semantics.

Asserting that an IRI  is owl:sameAs another IRI is a statement about these IRIs as  Individuals.  Assertions about those IRIs as Classes or Properties are independent of assertions about Individuals.

:ClassA rdf:type owl:Class.

:ClassB rdf:type owl:Class.

:ClassA owl:sameAs :ClassB

:anA rdf:type ClassA.

Does not entail 

:classA owl:equivalentClass :classB. 

or 

:anA rdf:type :ClassB.    

Depending on characteristics of a specific reasoner hinders interoperability and hence reuse. 

Simon 

On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 10:11 AM, Mike Bennett <mbennett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The problem with using owl:sameAs is that you have immediately changed the nature of your model: from a model of concepts to a model of words. That is, from an ontology to a vocabulary.

As long as it's clear which one of those you are doing, that's fine. But I find an ontology of concepts to be far more useful than a vocabulary of words.

The only place I would use owl:sameAs is when mapping between ontologies that have concepts with the same meanings.

Mike

On 02/02/2014 12:45, John McClure wrote:

No sir that's not what I am saying. Please reread my post, and use owl:sameAs.

On 2/2/2014 4:43 AM, Hans Teijgeler wrote:

John,

 

That happens already. You can create an extension of the RDL in the French language and state:

 

<dm:ClassOfInanimatePhysicalObject rdf:about="&rdl;RDS6462148">

        <skos:altLabel>"API 610-BB2 ÉTAPE SIMPLE POMPE CENTRIFUGE"@fr</skos:altLabel>

        <skos:definition>"Un seul ou deux étapes, la roue entre paliers, carter fendu radial, pompe centrifuge conçu selon les exigences énoncées dans l'API 610 pour le code pompes BB2."@fr</skos:definition>

        ........

</dm:ClassOfInanimatePhysicalObject>

 

and in Chinese:

 

<dm:ClassOfInanimatePhysicalObject rdf:about="&rdl;RDS6462148">

        <skos:altLabel>"API610-BB2单 级离心 泵"@zh</skos:altLabel>

        <skos:definition>"轴 承，径 向剖分机 壳，离 心泵根 据API610码BB2泵规 定的要求设 计之 间的单一或 两个阶 段，叶 轮。"@zh</skos:definition>

        ........

</dm:ClassOfInanimatePhysicalObject>

 

Excuses for any funny Google translation (if applicable).

 

Regards,

Hans

 

Hans Teijgeler,

Laanweg 28,

1871 BJ Schoorl,

Netherlands

www.mnei.nl

---

From: ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John McClure
Sent: zondag 2 februari 2014 12:47
To: ontology-summit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] [ReusableContent] Partitioning the problem

Just define separate resources for an identifier and translated names, each with an owl:sameAs triple directing either person or tool to the normative resource, named in the author's own language. This normative definition can contain rdfs:labels and or skos' labels or skos notation who cares. 

If one's tools can't handle owl:sameAs then yeah, they're a bit primitive. (Fortunately semantic wikis handle sameAs quite naturally).

My point is that if ontologies or datasets publish/use identifiers of any sort, but don't publish also resources with such sameAs triples, its authors risk unfriendly comments for foisting this task on everyone else. So yeah, this is a best practice for identifiers that should be in the communique for reuse.

/jmc

On 2/2/2014 1:15 AM, Matthew West wrote:

Dear David, Ali, Amanda, and Kingsley,

Since this arose from considering ISO 15926, and there was at least an implicit criticism involved, let me just explain what we were expecting to happen.

We were not expecting others to use the thing ID in ISO 15926-2 to identify their internal data in their programs or even databases, although this is, of course, a choice that is available if it is convenient. We were expecting a situation in which different systems had pre-existing names for the different classes, and they were not about to change. One of the reasons we had support for multiple names was so we could provide a mapping of these names, minimising what was needed to be done within the existing systems. So we expected local copies of the RDL to include the local names of the classes for each system a names for those classes, with which systems used that name, so that translations could be done. It was anticipated that the RDL itself would be held in a database, and so a non-human readable ID would be adequate.

Of course things change in 10+ years, though we had similar discussions then, that I note are being had now. In the end you have to decide, nothing is likely to be right for everything.

Regards

Matthew West

From: ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ali SH
Sent: 02 February 2014 00:52
To: Ontology Summit 2014 discussion
Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] [ReusableContent] Partitioning the problem

Dear Amanda,

On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 6:59 PM, Amanda Vizedom <amanda.vizedom@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I understand, but I think it is mostly a tooling problem. The tools do not use the appropriate formal language features. Humans shouldn't be writing or debugging SPARQL queries with only the concept ID visible, whether it is opaque or suggestive. Either way, there is extra lookup (out of the cognitive task space) and a greater likelihood of error than is really tenable. Unfortunately, that is mostly the state of the art in open/COTS tools, but the way to fix it isn't to make the IDs more suggestive (and conducive to error); it's to make the tools use the human-oriented features of the language when interfacing with humans. BTW, I specified state of the art in *COTS* tools, because I've seen a number of proprietary tools, developed for use within an company only, that don't make this same error. I'm perpetually frustrated that we don't have the same level of tooling in the open-source or COTS worlds. But it is not a coincidence that the companies in question have done well in developing semantic enterprise or web systems with those ontologies as components. They take their ontologies, and the processes concerning them, rather seriously. 

Yes. Fully agree here. In the example I cited, the tooling was just atrocious, and better tools would have addressed the problem.

I just don't think the solution is to treat the ontology language as more impoverished than it really is. We know there is far to go in improving tools, anyway. I'd say that one of the improvements should be to make tools that use the existing support for co-existing human-readability and machine-uniqueness.

Agreed!

Ali

Amanda

 

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