RE: Versioning vs Temporal modeling of Patient State

Chimezie, 

> If a class has a particular 'definition' (i.e., the criteria 
> for membership of its instances) at a particular time and 
> that definition 'changes' then we are talking about a 
> different class altogether not a 'version' of the same class 

Yes. That is why I consider the OBO Foundry's wording "the original URI
should still point to the old term or concept, even if it is deprecated"
(From William Bug) is a bit self-contradicted.

In software engineering, if a class or a function is labeled as
"deprecated", it intends to warn the programmers that the code/functionality
might not be available some point in the future.

But when crafting an ontology, we present our view on certain reality.  If
the view is wrong or inadequate, there will certainly less cited (i.e.,
linked) by others and eventually die.  Hence, the notion of deprecation
seems not apply if the URI is to be persisted. (I strongly support this OBO
policy).

But on the other hand, there is situiations that the crafted ontology is due
to errors but not due to different theories or views.  Hence, we need to
"deprecate" certain URIs. I think it is necessary to make distinctions
between the two and give different URI policies.

Xiaoshu

Received on Thursday, 11 January 2007 22:32:53 UTC