[tdwg-content] use cases and competency questions

[Steve Baskauf]

Thanks Joel and Bob for the helpful examples and references.  They have 
helped me understand this better.

By the way, I'm sorry if in my last post I sounded ungrateful for Bob's 
feedback on darwin-sw.  Cam and I are actually quite keen to have 
comments and criticism about it.  I just didn't want the discussion 
about the DwC term proposals to get sidetracked.

Steve

joel sachs wrote:
> Steve,
>
> Notice in Bob's examples that use cases are a tool for all software 
> engineering tasks, whereas competency questions are used primarily in 
> ontology design. A couple of advantages in expressing ontology use cases 
> as competency questions are:
>
> i. "Can the competency question be answered?"  can be easier to answer 
> than "Is the use case satisfied?"
>
> ii. Posing the competency questions as queries can give hints about the 
> structure of our desired ontology.
> This is somewhat ass-backwards, since the structure of the ontology 
> determines the structure of the query (not vice versa), but since 
> ontologies exist to be queried, thinking about the shape of queries can be 
> helpful in determining the shape of the ontology.
>
> To take an example:
>
> Your Individual/BiologicalEntity use case 1 is "allow for linking multiple 
> Occurrence records that involved the same organism at different times 
> and/or places"
>
> This can translate to
>
> "Find all occurrences of [individual]"
>
> or
>
> select ?occurrence
> where {
>           ?occurrence rdf:type dwc:occurrence .
>  	?occurrence dwc:ofIndividual [individual] .
> }
>
> We can then consider our design issues with reference to the query. For 
> example: When answering this query, does it matter whether the scope of 
> Individual/Biological Entity includes organelles or wolf packs? Does it 
> matter if the Individual/BiologicalEntities are taxonomically homogeneous? 
> To me, the clear answer to both questions is no.
>
> Now consider your Individual/BiologicalEntity use case 3:
> "To link multiple Identifications of the same individual organism, 
> particularly when these Identifications were based on different pieces of 
> evidence arising from the same individual"
>
> This would, I think, give rise to a number of competency questions, 
> including: "Find all identifications of [Individual]"
>
> or
>
> select ?identification
> where {
>  	?identification rdf:type dwc:Identification .
>  	?identification dwc:ofIndividual [individual] .
> }
>
> Now let's consider those same design issues:
> Does it matter if the scope of Individual includes organelles or wolf packs?
> No.
> Does it matter whether or not Individuals are taxonomically homogeneous?
> Yes, for the reasons you gave, which involve the non-heritability of properties in a partonomy.
>
> Reading the above, you might think "I've gained no new insight from the 
> competency questions." But you've already put considerable thought into 
> how various ontology design decisions will affect our ability to satisfy 
> the use cases. In general, the competency question methodology is meant to 
> focus and streamline our consideration of design questions.
>
> Joel.
>
>
>
> On Tue, 26 Jul 2011, Bob Morris wrote:
>
>   
>> As to competency questions, this might help more than a definition,
>> since there is no agreed upon one:
>> http://marinemetadata.org/references/competencyquestionsoverview Maybe
>> there is something better since this was written.
>>
>> As to use cases, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_case is fair enough,
>> but probably more than you want to know.
>>
>> http://www.cragsystems.co.uk/SFRWUC/ is a pretty good tutorial for use
>> case modeling with UML, and in about 4-5 clicks will get you to both
>> definition and examples. You probably don't need to go further than
>> that, especially because the further in you get, the more nit-picky is
>> this particular tutorial.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 10:21 PM, Steve Baskauf
>> <steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
>>     
>>> For the benefit of the uninitiated (that would be me and possibly
>>> others), could someone please post definitions of "competency question"
>>> and "use case" along with a couple of examples of each?
>>>
>>> Steve
>>>
>>> --
>>> Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
>>> Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
>>>
>>> postal mail address:
>>> VU Station B 351634
>>> Nashville, TN  37235-1634,  U.S.A.
>>>
>>> delivery address:
>>> 2125 Stevenson Center
>>> 1161 21st Ave., S.
>>> Nashville, TN 37235
>>>
>>> office: 2128 Stevenson Center
>>> phone: (615) 343-4582,  fax: (615) 343-6707
>>> http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> tdwg-content mailing list
>>> tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org
>>> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
>>>
>>>       
>>
>> -- 
>> Robert A. Morris
>>
>> Emeritus Professor  of Computer Science
>> UMASS-Boston
>> 100 Morrissey Blvd
>> Boston, MA 02125-3390
>> IT Staff
>> Filtered Push Project
>> Department of Organismal and Evolutionary Biology
>> Harvard University
>>
>>
>> email: morris.bob at gmail.com
>> web: http://efg.cs.umb.edu/
>> web: http://etaxonomy.org/mw/FilteredPush
>> http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram
>> phone (+1) 857 222 7992 (mobile)
>> _______________________________________________
>> tdwg-content mailing list
>> tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org
>> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
>> .
>>     
>
>   

-- 
Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences

postal mail address:
VU Station B 351634
Nashville, TN  37235-1634,  U.S.A.

delivery address:
2125 Stevenson Center
1161 21st Ave., S.
Nashville, TN 37235

office: 2128 Stevenson Center
phone: (615) 343-4582,  fax: (615) 343-6707
http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu

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