RE: LSIDs and ontology segmentation

 
> > If o2 owl:imports o1, o2 is tightly bound to o1.  If I want 
> to develop 
> > another ontology say, o3, and want to use the concepts of 
> o2, I must 
> > also have to import the o1 as well.
> 
> I would think an ontology author would only import a second 
> ontology if the terms / concepts within *depended* on terms / 
> concepts in the second ontology, in which case it would 
> follow that a third ontology (or an instance graph) that 
> wanted to use o2  be required to import o1. By depend, I mean 
> for purposes of reasoning.

If owl:import can be selectively done. Then, what is the criteria to do
that?  Then, how the ontology's designer to tell its user its intent.  For
instance, if this must be aligned to ontology and if that is optional etc.

Although this owl:import closure is perhaps a similar issue as the
web-closure, it should easily avoided with careful ontology design and
deployment.

Or have I misunderstood your interpretation?

> >  I must either pay the price,
> > i.e, to be forced into using o1. Or impossible because I might have 
> > some assertions in o3 that might incur inconsistency with 
> o1 but not 
> > necessarily o2.
> 
> Once again, if o1 is imported from o2 because it relies on 
> the terms in o2, there wouldn't be any inconsistencies, and 
> if there are it is more likely due to improper fragmentation 
> / linking by the author than a unintended / unexpected use of 
> the ontology terms.

Not really.  Especially, in science, we first need to agree that
disagreement exist.  

Also, there is an ontology evolution and management issue here.  For
example, if I develop a 2D gel ontology and temporarily aligned to a general
ontology, for instance, the BOSS.  But after the HCLS group finished the
development of a, say HCLS-Experiment ontology, how should I change my
alignment of the Gel ontology to HCLS-Experiment without breaking existing
applications that depend on the Gel/BOSS to function? 

Xiaoshu

Received on Thursday, 13 July 2006 20:48:30 UTC