Re: seeks input on Study Data Exchange Standards An alternative approach

Hi Peter,

Very nice observations!  I wholeheartedly agree with your basic thesis,
but I would quibble with one off-hand remark . . . 

On Tue, 2012-08-21 at 08:47 -0700, Peter.Hendler@kp.org wrote:
> Sorry I didn't make the meeting but just looked at the minutes. 
> 
> We (Kaiser) do use the Ontology features of SNOMED extensively and
> have a different take on how it should be done. 
> 
> Specifically we would not advocate for example, putting FHIR in RDF or
> OWL.  What we've found to be simple, useful, and very clean is to
> recognize the two different kinds of logic involved. 
> And keep them isolated to different parts of the model. 
> 
> Intensional  (like OWL, Open World, Reasoners and inferences) 
> Extensional (like HL7 openEHR all Object Oriented models, all
> databases) 

While I completely agree with the basic idea of being selective in the
use of inference, and in your rule-of-thumb in separating intensional
from extensional, I disagree that putting FHIR in RDF would be a bad
idea.  

Representing data in RDF does not mean that any sort of inference
*must* be done, though it does enable inference if you *choose* to do
so.   RDF can certainly be used merely as a flexible, schema-less data
model, using the closed world assumption (CWA), purely for data
integration purposes, and it is very good for this.  But it is important
to know which data is being used this way and which is being used under
the open world assumption, and I think your observations on this are
very good.

Best wishes,

-- 
David Booth, Ph.D.
http://dbooth.org/

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of his employer.

Received on Tuesday, 21 August 2012 21:34:26 UTC