Re: Finding ontology

Pierre,

I would recommend that you, at least initially, build your own ontology.
 All use cases are slightly different and it is very unlikely that you will
be able to find an ontology that meets your use case exactly.  Also, you do
not really get any immediate benefit by reusing an ontology.  The only
benefit comes when you want to link your data to other data that is
described by the ontology you reuse.  From your description, it does not
sound like this is an immediate requirement for you.

Building your own will save you a lot of time and trouble trying to scour
the web for an existing one and it will give you the freedom and flexibility
to build the ontology to do exactly what you want it to do.  Later, if you
decided you want to link your data up to other data (or someone else wants
to do it for you), then you can worry about replacing your ontology with
another ontology or mapping to another ontology.  Once you have your
ontology built and you use it for awhile, the process of mapping to another
ontology will be much easier because you will have a very good understanding
of the semantics of your project.

Mike Lang

Ontology Architect
Revelytix, Inc.

phone: 410-584-0009 (office)
           443-928-3782 (cell)
skype: michael.allen.lang.jr


On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 5:25 AM, Pierre-Yves <pingou@pingoured.fr> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am fairly new to the semantic web technology and I am trying to create
> my first rdf file.
> I am trying to describe the project I am working on. This project is
> basically a web-based database front end with some visualization tool
> attached. This project has three instances which I of course would like
> to describe as well.
>
> At the moment I have been using the doap ontology [1] to define my
> project, I though I could you the same 'project' property to defined the
> deployed instances but I have been advised on irc (#swig) not to do so
> but rather to try to define them as 'deployedInstance' or something
> similar (I was told that 'isInstanceOf' might not be the best choice).
>
> Now I am trying to find an ontology which would have this property.
>
> My question is therefore, what is the best way to find an ontology ? Is
> there a website which list the known semantic ontology and their
> properties and would allow to search for one ?
>
> Of course I would be happy if someone has an idea on an ontology which
> already has this property defined.
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Pierre
>
> [1] http://usefulinc.com/ns/doap
>
>
>