[tdwg-tag] Re-organisation of TDWG Ontology: Danger silence will == acquiescence!

Roger Hyam rogerhyam at mac.com
Thu May 14 14:39:51 CEST 2009


I agree. The less we define the better the ontology will be.

Roger


On 12 May 2009, at 15:17, Roderic Page wrote:

> Dear Roger,
>
> This is probably off topic (and maybe I missed something), but it  
> really worries me that much of the TDWG vocabulary is unique to  
> TDWG. Journal publishers are busy pumping out Dublin Core and PRISM  
> (sometimes with FOAF). I'm trying to link this to records  
> nomenclators pump out. I seem to recall some statement that where  
> possible TDWG would reuse existing vocabularies, but I don't see  
> this happening. In the meantime, I'm busy mapping our idiosyncratic  
> vocabulary to that used by publishers.
>
> Regards
>
> Rod
>
>
>
>
> On 12 May 2009, at 09:59, Roger Hyam wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I need to do some work on the Taxon Name and Taxon Concept  
>> vocabularies and believe I have come up with a good way of  
>> organising the TDWG ontology space (everything within http:/ 
>> rs.tdwg.org/ontology).
>>
>> The following are the changes I suggest:
>>
>> All files should be OWL DL compliant
>> All files should be openable in Protege 4 (I believe this is now  
>> good enough to use for editing these small ontologies)
>> We take a highly structured modular approach I call this the Bricks  
>> and Mortar design pattern
>> Some files are 'Bricks' and as such import or reference no other  
>> files, classes or individuals. e.g. TaxonName does not mention a  
>> higher 'Name' object in the class hierarchy.
>> Other files are 'Mortar'. These files import Bricks and stipulate  
>> relationships between things. Because we are using OWL it is easy  
>> to define things like the class hierarchy or the range of a  
>> property in a separate file to the file the original class or  
>> property was defined in.
>> This pattern gives us maximum re-usability as the same Brick could  
>> be used in different ways. It does not bind us to any one  
>> implementation of one object.
>> An example of the usage pattern would be to define TaxonName,  
>> TaxonConcept, Rank, NomenclaturalCode as separate bricks that don't  
>> reference each other at all then create a TCS ontology that imports  
>> these 4 bricks and defines their relationships.
>> We move to some other method of presenting the ontologies on line -  
>> possibly the OWLDoc plug-in for Protege. This would lose us the  
>> branded look we have at the moment but would be more flexible and  
>> consistent in the long run.
>>
>> As I need to do this for the TaxonName TaxonConcept vocabularies I  
>> volunteer to do manage the space this year if people are happy  
>> going down this route.
>>
>> From the point of view of deployed systems (the nomenclators) there  
>> may be a need for a namespace change on some properties but I would  
>> review what is in use and this would be trivial - if necessary at  
>> all.
>>
>> What do you think? I will take silence as acquiescence on the  
>> grounds that any movement is better than none -  though I don't  
>> suppose I will get round to doing anything about changes till after  
>> e-Biosphere in June.
>>
>> All the best,
>>
>> Roger
>>
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------
>>  Roger Hyam - Project Officer WP4
>>  Pan European Species Infrastructure
>>  +44 75 90 60 80 16
>> -----------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> tdwg-tag mailing list
>> tdwg-tag at lists.tdwg.org
>> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-tag
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> Roderic Page
> Professor of Taxonomy
> DEEB, FBLS
> Graham Kerr Building
> University of Glasgow
> Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
>
> Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
> Tel: +44 141 330 4778
> Fax: +44 141 330 2792
> AIM: rodpage1962 at aim.com
> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
> Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
> Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
>
>
>
>
>
>

-------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Hyam
Roger at 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/
-------------------------------------------------------------




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-tag/attachments/20090514/320dccff/attachment.html 


More information about the tdwg-tag mailing list