RE: Antwort: RE: Semantic web article in Nature Biotechnology

wangxiao wrote:

> c:foo rdfs:domain c:D.
> c:foo rdfs:range c:R.
> 
> And in a prfoile, p1, you say
> 
> c:D owl:equivalentClass a:D
> c:R owl:equivalentClass b:R.
> 
> And then you use your p1 for application.
>
> It may sound strange at first, but when you create c:foo, you make an
> ontological commitment to certain reality.  People may like your
> "foo", but not necessarily your "conceptualization" that your c:D is
> the same as a:D. To make it this way, you give others a chance to use
> your c:foo without subscribe your view to others.  If they like your
> "binding", they just use your profile.  This extra work maximize
> ontology reuse, and the key of SW's success is ontology reuse.

So, in other words, the relationship "foo" will mean different
things in different ontologies, depending on which profile they 
decide to use? 



>> If we take a biological example, OBO is currently coming up
>> with a core Relationship Ontology. Now they use a different
>> formalism from semantic web "proper", but, to me, having a
>> core set of vocabularies describing is a positive thing.
> 
> Yes, core is good. I don't have objection to that.  But if your tie
> all other ontologies to it, it kills science because what if the core
> turns out to be faulty, then all other ontologies die with it as well.

If it turns out to be faulty, then they can all be fixed at once. 
Is this not one of the main purposes of re-use?


>> It also appears to me that if you consider the formal
>> semantics of OWL if any two ontologies use the same
>> relationships (from a third ontology) then you may well be
>> able to infer relationships between concepts in the two
>> ontologies that even if they do not directly reference each other.
> 
> Yes, or not.  RDF is open world semantics, you are free to add your
> own constraints on the terms developed elsewhere.  Using Profile
> actually help you to manage this personal view.

It's a modularisation problem. If we use a common relationship 
ontology, and I import your ontology into mine to use, for example,
a few of the terms, then, potentially, any of your terms can appears 
as a child of mine.  


>> I think Robert also has a deeper point about modularisation.
>> We need to be able to split ontologies up. But we don't have
>> the tools and language support that most programming
>> languauges offer. Should an ontology not be able to declare a
>> "public" interface, as with many programming languages?
> 
> Yes, I can't agree more on content partition.  But it is such a
> subjective matter and cann't be applied without a context.  The O3 is
> introduced to help guiding the ontology deployment not development.
> They are two different issues, don't you agree?

I'm not really sure. Standards for developing ontologies would 
seem to have major implications for deployment to me. 

Phil

Received on Thursday, 13 October 2005 13:36:45 UTC