One example is the methodology of "competency questions", whether in natural language or something formal, or both. These are explicit questions that the target information systems should be able to address, and if inclusive enough will help reveal the terms and relationships needed. [1] touches on them. [2] is a specific biodiversity set of competency questions by Dave Thau, (the only biodiversity competency questions I know about, but there may be others now lurking in ALA, or elsewhere.) [3] Is a nice paper with rather explicit detail about how they designed and exploited their competency questions.
[1] http://protege.stanford.edu/publications/ontology_development/ontology101-no... [2] http://code.google.com/p/ala-bie/wiki/OntologyCompetency [3] A Semantic Web Ontology for Small Molecules and Their Biological Targets JooYoung Choi, Melissa J. Davis, Andrew F. Newman, Mark A. Ragan Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling 2010 50 (5), 732-741
Bob Morris
Robert A. Morris Emeritus Professor of Computer Science UMASS-Boston 100 Morrissey Blvd Boston, MA 02125-3390 Associate, Harvard University Herbaria email: morris.bob@gmail.com web: http://bdei.cs.umb.edu/ web: http://etaxonomy.org/mw/FilteredPush http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram phone (+1) 857 222 7992 (mobile)
On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 8:55 AM, Arlin Stoltzfus arlin@umd.edu wrote:
On Nov 13, 2010, at 5:17 AM, Roger Hyam wrote:
I think we need a mother of all points at the beginning 0) Clearly defined use-cases/scenarios/competency questions that have enough detail to act as tests of any proposed solutions. Without these we will continue to bob around in the sea of good ideas and never arrive at any destination.
I often have thought the same thing. Folks working on ontologies tend to focus on philosophical issues of conceptualization, i.e., painting a detailed picture of the "things" involved. This quickly leads to problems because, to the extent that the world actually can be understood via "classes" and "properties", domain experts simply do not agree on what these classes and properties are. Yet one of the (frequently implicit) assumptions of ontology-building is that the domain experts have an agreed-upon description of the world, or they can talk themselves to the point of having one. The alternative is to focus on the process of reasoning from inputs to correct outputs, i.e., test-driven ontology development. Perhaps domain experts would agree much more thoroughly on what inferences are valid, and what ones are invalid, from a given set of inputs. In an ideal world, the domain experts would provide a rich set of hypothetical information inputs, and then they would provide a rich set of inferences from them, and perhaps an equally rich set of invalid inferences, and then the knowledge engineering folks would build the ontology to avoid all the invalid inferences and support as many of the valid inferences as they can (until the money runs out). Are there any examples of this approach? Arlin
Who is it for? What will it enable them to do? Do they want/need to do it?
On 13 Nov 2010, at 08:30, Kevin Richards RichardsK@landcareresearch.co.nz wrote:
'Effective tools' to do X, Y & Z always seem to be on the agenda, but I'm not sure it is the tools that are the hold up. Unfortunately I think it boils down to funding... I'm sure if we had adequate funding to get people together for the required length of time, working on the right stuff etc, etc, then we would make fantastic progress.
I'm thinking a really good session with a basic UML tool would be a big step forward. I have got hold of a UML tool and intend to have a go at a core tdwg model. I think it would be great then if we could organise a session on working on this model.
Kevin
Sent from my HTC
----- Reply message ----- From: "Lee Belbin" leebelbin@gmail.com Date: Sat, Nov 13, 2010 3:42 pm Subject: [tdwg-content] Relation of GNA to TDWG vocabularies To: "tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org" tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org
Well stated Stan, but I'd add a third-
- Effective tool/s for viewing (graph, sub-graph, tables, properties etc.),
add/delete/modify with adaptable governance control (e.g., assigned management to sub-graph domains), annotate (with full logging of who did what, when and how...). This is in effect a collaboration tool.
Until we have a tool (preferable to tools) that can be intuitive and effective for building, managing and deploying /exporting vocabs or ontologies, we will struggle with this socially and technically tough, but very necessary task. The social issues are the hardest, but an effective collaboration tool would be a big help.
A tool that will be readily embraced by #2 (the domain specialists) seems far more important than the tools I've seen so far that are embraced by #1 (e.g. Protégé).
That we don't have a TDWG ontology is an increasing worry.
Lee
Lee Belbin Geospatial Team Leader Atlas of Living Australia
-----Original Message----- From: tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Blum, Stan Sent: Saturday, 13 November 2010 9:43 AM To: tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] Relation of GNA to TDWG vocabularies
Progress on the TDWG ontology seems to require:
- one or more people with good sense of what can be done with ontologies,
both in the near-term and long-term; and 2) one or more people who understand the way information is partitioned in this domain and how it could fit together.
I think we have a lot of #2, but not many of #1.
FYI, we have seed money to bring these categories together.
-Stan
On 11/12/10 2:25 PM, "Bob Morris" morris.bob@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 4:57 PM, Richard Pyle deepreef@bishopmuseum.org wrote:
[...] the current status of the TDWG-Ontology efforts. The Google Code website seems a bit anemic,
Ooh, I love that line. I think I'll put it in the script of my next animation, to be titled: "Alpha and Beta discuss the current status of of the TDWG-Ontology efforts"
Thanks for correcting the URL.
Bob
Robert A. Morris Emeritus Professor of Computer Science UMASS-Boston 100 Morrissey Blvd Boston, MA 02125-3390 Associate, Harvard University Herbaria email: morris.bob@gmail.com web: http://bdei.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@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
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