RE: CIDOC, alternative to Harmony

This paper

http://metadata.net/harmony/JODI_Oct2002.pdf

Provides a comparison of CIDOC and Harmony.

M

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Butler, Mark 
> Sent: 04 June 2003 11:21
> To: www-rdf-dspace@w3.org
> Subject: CIDOC, alternative to Harmony
> 
> 
> The CIDOC CRM ontology performs a similar role to the Harmony 
> ontology but is more extensive in scope. CIDOC's stated aim is
> 
> "The CIDOC CRM is intended to promote a  shared understanding 
> of cultural heritage  information by providing a common and  
> extensible semantic framework that any  cultural heritage 
> information can be  mapped to. It is intended to be a common  
> language for domain experts and  implementers to formulate 
> requirements for  information systems and to serve as a guide 
>  for good practice of conceptual modelling.  In this way, it 
> can provide the "semantic  glue" needed to mediate between 
> different  sources of cultural heritage information,  such as 
> that published by museums,  libraries and archives."
> 
> For a quick introduction to the ontology, see the 
> monohierarchies of entities and properties in this document:
> 
> http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/docs/cidoc_crm_version_3.2.1.rtf
> 
> Some observations:
> 
> - Some of the things CIDOC and Harmony (and Dublin Core for 
> that matter) define are pretty general, e.g. "event". It 
> feels like such definitions could be done in a standard layer 
> that ontologies like CIDOC and Harmony sit on top. 
> Unfortunately efforts like the IEEE SUO are much, much too 
> complicated - perhaps there are some more generic, less 
> domain specific ontologies that define things like event, 
> actor, place etc which ontologies like CIDOC or Harmony could 
> sit on? Of course in theory we don't need to worry about this 
> now, we can map to other ontologies later, but it's just that 
> I expect there are important modelling decisions here so we 
> might find with a bit of analysis that there are subtle 
> differences in the higher level entities and properties in 
> these ontologies (to use the jargon, they maintain different 
> ontological commitment) which could cause problems later. 
> 
> - Property hierarchies in CIDOC are much shallower than 
> entity hierarchies, as property inheritance is more complicated. 
> 
> - Representing large ontologies diagramatically is 
> problematic (you need a big piece of paper) but diagrammtic 
> representations are easier to understand than purely textual 
> descriptions, although they only provide a general 
> introduction so are not a substitute. Furthermore different 
> ontologies use different diagrammatic approaches.  
> 
> Dr Mark H. Butler
> Research Scientist                HP Labs Bristol
> mark-h_butler@hp.com
> Internet: http://www-uk.hpl.hp.com/people/marbut/
>

Received on Wednesday, 4 June 2003 06:26:08 UTC