Dear All,

Concerning the question of implementations of CIDOC CRM there might be a misunderstanding. There are none because the CIDOC-CRM is a core ontology which serves as (1) an intellectual guide to create schemata, formats, profiles and (2) as a language for analysis of existing sources and models for data integration (mapping). That means in this context that - on addition to CIDOC-CRM - there is a need of a protocol (such as the OAI [open archive initiative]) serving as means of transport.

NB the CIDOC CRM has been developed because of already existing different schematas to make them commonly understandable. It was primarily not developed to create new schemata (of course one can use it for that purpose as a best practise guide). That is all for the time being.

Best

Karl

Ps: I am not in for the next two weeks.

________________________________________________

Dr. Karl-Heinz Lampe

Head of Biodiversity Informatics, Curator

Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig (ZFMK)

Adenauerallee 160

53113 Bonn

Tel: ++49 (0)228 9122290 Fax: ++49 (0)228 9122291

http://www.zfmk.de

http://www. biodat.de

e-mail: k.lampe.zfmk@uni-bonn.de

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-----Original Message----- From: On Behalf Of Roger Hyam Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 3:09 PM To: Renato De Giovanni Cc: Tdwg-tag@lists.tdwg.org Subject: Re: [Tdwg-tag] Object Model / Ontology Management - how we kick it off.

Hi Renato,

Thanks for that contribution. I have had CIDOC on my list since the St Petersburg meeting last year. We definitely need to address how we make use of it or integrate with it. My worry is looking for implementations that use it. I am not aware of organisations sharing data on the basis of schemas derived from the CIDOC model - this is worrying as the ontology has been under development for 10 years - it may also be that I am ignorant.

Does anyone on the list have practical experience of using CIDOC?

Thanks,

Roger

Renato De Giovanni wrote:

Roger,

I think I agree with most of your points (also from previous messages).

Concerning the representation independent object model, I would suggest the same approach taken by CIDOC CRM:

http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/docs/cidoc_crm_version_4.2.pdf http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/docs/cidoc_crm_version_4.2.pdf

It's not easy to find such clear and well documented modelling work.

Although at a first glance it could fall into the "ontology-at-the- level-of-laws-of-physics" category, I won't make that judgment because CIDOC's scope is definitely broader than ours. Anyway, what I'm suggesting is to use the same approach and the same kind of documentation. Using and extending CIDOC is a completely different thing - probably interesting (I think), but something that could even be evaluated and addressed at another stage.

Regards, -- Renato

On 22 Feb 2006 at 15:50, Roger Hyam wrote:

Hi All,

It is generally agreed that we need an representation independent object model or ontology of some kind. I would like to put together a list of the things that need to be agreed or investigated in order to do this.

Firstly the things I believe we can all agree on (stop me if I am wrong). * It should be representation independent (i.e. we should be able to move it between 'languages' UML, OWL, BNF etc). * It should be dynamic (i.e. capable of evolving through time). * It should be polymorphic. This is a result of it being dynamic. There will, at a minimum, be multiple version of any one part of the model when new version are introduced. * It should NOT attempt to be omniscient i.e. it will not cover everything in our domain, only the parts that need to be communicated. * It will be managed in a distributed fashion. Different teams will take responsibility for different parts of it. My first Question is:

Does the centralization of the ontology need to go beyond a small shared vocabulary of terms or base classes?

I envisage this ontology containing things like Collection, Specimen, TaxonConcept, TaxonName but not defining the detailed structure of these objects. It would contain a maximum of a few 10's of objects and properties. TDWG subgroups would be responsible for building ontologies that extend these base objects but that generally didn't refer to each other - only to the core. If this is true then I think the definition of the top level object falls within the remit of the TAG ( in consultation with others).

If this is not a valid way forward what are the alternatives?

Are their questions we should ask before this one?

Once again I'd be grateful for your thoughts.

Roger

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