Re: Versioning system for ontologies

Hi all

+1 with Alan on this. Some quick figures to show that his recommandations
are much needed ...
Quick query on LOV aggregator database http://bit.ly/12sUtDA
... yields exactly 9 vocabularies (out of more than 300) using
owl:versionIRI and optional owl:priorVersion

There is room for improvement, clearly ...

Regarding generalization of Github for maintaining ontologies. I must say I
don't like it too much (but maybe because I'm not used to Github
otherwise), the main drawback I have found along my task of LOV curator is
that it can lead to forget the basics, as Alan points rightly, to begin by
having the current version available directly from its URI, and not hidden
somewhere in a zip in some directory of Github, as seen too often.

Actually using Github tends to make consider ontology management as similar
to software management. There are important differences, and URI (IRI)
management and persistance not the least!

Cheers

Bernard

PS : As far as I am concerned for small ontologies such as the ones I
maintain at lingvoj.org, I'm totally happy with
a good text editor and Turtle, plus online services for validation [1],
sanity checking of namespaces [2] and even publication [3].
But I'm lazy :)

[1] http://www.rdfabout.com/demo/validator/ ,
http://www.w3.org/RDF/Validator/
[2] http://graphite.ecs.soton.ac.uk/checker/
[3] http://ontorule-project.eu/parrot/parrot






2013/4/19 Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>

> Don't forget about OWL's versionIRI, which gives a way to express that
> different versions are of a single ontology. The most basic version control
> is to periodically save a file, put it at a location, and make the
> versionIRI point to it. Keep the ontologyIRI the same thoughtout. Use
> import with the version you care load. At the ontologyIRI put either the
> most recent version or the most recent version you release.
>
> There is no need for additional repository infrastructure, though that may
> add useful features. Whatever you do, make sure that at a minimum you
> version using vanilla specifications, given that they can support that.
>
> I generally recommend you do not change IRIs of terms as you change
> versions. Rather,  try to ensure that the referents of your URIs refer to
> the same intended entities, and obsolete them if they no longer refer well.
>
> Happy to discuss this offlist if you are interested in my experiences.
>
> Best,
> Alan
>
> On Friday, April 19, 2013, Ali SH wrote:
>
>> I'm also very interested in hearing answers to this.
>>
>> As Stephen mentions, treating an ontology analogously to source code
>> (which is close enough) means that you can use services such as github (or
>> google code). The downside is that an ontology lifecycle management is *
>> not* equivalent to source code management. Barring a native solution for
>> ontologies, they do come quite close.
>>
>> You might also be interested in following the development of the Open
>> Ontology Repository [1]
>> (a fork of the BioPortal platform), which among other things will be
>> addressing this issue as well.
>>
>> [1] http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OpenOntologyRepository
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Stephen D. Williams <sdw@lig.net>wrote:
>>
>>>  Do you want to version it like source code?  Everyone has, is, or will
>>> move to Git for that.
>>> Or maintain the history of changes for reasoning and/or historical
>>> queries?  This is probably more needed for actual statements, but could
>>> make sense here too: "Answer this query based on the ontology at time X."
>>>
>>> Stephen
>>>
>>>
>>> On 4/19/13 7:05 AM, Prateek wrote:
>>>
>>>  Hello all,
>>>
>>>  I am trying to identify a system which will provide versioning and
>>> revision control capabilities specifically for ontologies. Does anyone have
>>> any experience and idea about which systems can help out or if systems like
>>> SVN, CVS can do the job?
>>>
>>>  Regards
>>>
>>>  Prateek
>>>
>>>  --
>>>
>>> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>>> Prateek Jain, Ph. D.
>>> RSM
>>> IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
>>> 1101 Kitchawan Road, 37-244
>>> Yorktown Heights, NY 10598
>>> Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/prateekj
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Stephen D. Williams sdw@lig.net stephendwilliams@gmail.com LinkedIn: http://sdw.st/in
>>> V:650-450-UNIX (8649) V:866.SDW.UNIX V:703.371.9362 F:703.995.0407AIM:sdw Skype:StephenDWilliams Yahoo:sdwlignet Resume: http://sdw.st/gres
>>> Personal: http://sdw.st facebook.com/sdwlig twitter.com/scienteer
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>> (•`'·.¸(`'·.¸(•)¸.·'´)¸.·'´•) .,.,
>>
>


-- 
*Bernard Vatant
*
Vocabularies & Data Engineering
Tel :  + 33 (0)9 71 48 84 59
Skype : bernard.vatant
Blog : the wheel and the hub <http://bvatant.blogspot.com>
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