There is an OMG Metamodel for ontology description. At least one implementation of it
http://www.eclipse.org/m2m/atl/usecases/ODMImplementation/
claims to support designing OWL ontologies with UML,

I think it was Markus who pointed me at a commercial product that has OWL<-->UML<-->XML Schema or something like that. I think I was underwhelmed by it at Bratislava when I last tried it, but maybe it is better now.


One gotcha about OWL as normative that always worries me is that a lot non-specialist folks thing RDF means RDF/XML.  That wouldn't stop me from using it though.  After all, it's a golden road(*) to machine reasoning....  :-)

Bob

(*)Not to be confused with a yellow-brick road.




On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 9:38 AM, Roger Hyam <rogerhyam@mac.com> wrote:
Hi Markus,

My plan is to produce an abstract model (a text description of the
classes and properties) and a series of example concrete models. One
would be the OWL ontology (perhaps this would be normative not sure
yet) another would be a CSV file format and a third would be a simple
(one namespace) XML file format. I will define mappings between all
these (possibly XSLT to get from XML to CSV and OWL).

I also plan to do a mapping from the IPT checklist format to one or
all of these things.

It would be good to write a couple of tools to do some auto conversion.

If I cut out all the rubbish and only include what is actually used we
are only talking two classes and < thirty properties so I should be
able beat the thing into submission quiet quickly.

All the best,

Roger

On 24 Apr 2009, at 12:07, Markus Döring (GBIF) wrote:

> Roger,
> if you are working on that already, what do you think are the chances
> to have a one to one mapping from the taxonomic dwc terms to the names
> & taxon classes in the ontology?
>
> We are using the dwc terms not only for occurrence records, but are
> already encoding pure taxonomic or nomenclatural checklists with
> simple dwc terms. Within ECAT and also the Global Names Index /
> Architecture we have started sharing such checklists encoded as text
> files which are far easier to handle than TCS-RDF, especially when
> dealing with hundreds of thousands of names. The expressiveness is of
> course limited, but it allows us to easily share all of the basic
> taxonomic/nomenclatural information such as synonyms, basionyms,
> taxonomic hierarchies, taxon concept reference, original publication,
> nomenclatural code, nomenclatural & taxonomic status, rank, atomised
> name parts and the classic higher dwc ranks for each name. I would be
> super glad to see a convergence with the ontology here.
>
> Markus
>
>
>
> On Apr 24, 2009, at 11:54, Roger Hyam wrote:
>
>> Hi Peter,
>>
>> The TaxonOccurrence standard is not actually a standard. It is part
>> of
>> the vocabulary that was put together two years ago and maps well to
>> DwC.
>>
>> Meanwhile, as Markus points out, DwC has gone its own way.
>>
>> The whole TDWG ontology needs some clarification and sorting out and
>> as Bob points out this is now done on a voluntary basis.
>>
>> I am working on the TaxonName and TaxonConcept vocabularies because I
>> need to use them. I hope I will provide what Markus requests (good
>> return type definitions for GUIDs) but I will only do it for taxon
>> names and concepts because that is all I am working on. I hope to
>> take
>> this to a stage where it is solid, documented and standardizable.
>>
>> This will entail doing some stuff on the way the TDWG ontology/
>> vocabulary is presented but really it is not my department to do that
>> alone.
>>
>> This is very important for TDWG (as Markus points out).
>>
>> What really needs to happen is for people who need things to happen
>> in
>> the ontology to role up their sleeves and make them happen.
>>
>> For occurrence stuff I recommend you join forces with John Wieczorek.
>>
>> All the best,
>>
>> Roger
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> tdwg-tag@lists.tdwg.org
>> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-tag
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
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-------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Hyam
Roger@BiodiversityCollectionsIndex.org
http://www.BiodiversityCollectionsIndex.org
-------------------------------------------------------------
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
20A Inverleith Row, Edinburgh, EH3 5LR, UK
Tel: +44 131 552 7171 ext 3015
Fax: +44 131 248 2901
http://www.rbge.org.uk/
-------------------------------------------------------------




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--
Robert A. Morris
Professor of Computer Science
UMASS-Boston
ram@cs.umb.edu
http://bdei.cs.umb.edu/
http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram
http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram/calendar.html
phone (+1)617 287 6466