RE: [Proposal][SKOS-Core] handling top concepts

Not so much an objection as a puzzlement. Leonard's message of 7 August
clarified that we thesaurus builders think of relationships as existing
between terms or concepts rather than existing between concepts and the
vocabularies that include the concepts. So if there is an attribute
"hasTopConcept" we would expect that to be a way of expressing the
widely used inter-term relationship called "Top Term" and abbreviated
"TT". 

Example:
	Cattle
	  BT Mammals
	  TT Animals
	  NT Heifers

Some thesauri have displays which present the whole thesaurus as a set
of hierarchies under all the Top Terms present. (And the number of top
terms is typically in the hundreds or more, unless very general top
terms such as "Entities" and "Properties" are employed).  It is useful
to be able to identify all the top terms in the thesaurus, so that you
can easily present one of these displays. So I suppose you could say
that the top terms were in some way attributes of the thesaurus.
(Although I would normally think of them as content items rather than
attributes) But I certainly don't see "having a top term (or concept)"
as being a relationship between a scheme and a concept. 

By the way, a scheme must have at least one term (concept) in it to
exist at all, and that term, if alone, would be a top term (concept). In
other words, no such thing as a scheme that has no top terms (concepts).

Perhaps "relationship" means something different in the RDF world?
Rather unlucky when that world meets the thesaurus world and we try to
cross-communicate!

Stella

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Stella Dextre Clarke
Information Consultant
Luke House, West Hendred, Wantage, Oxon, OX12 8RR, UK
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-----Original Message-----
From: public-esw-thes-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-esw-thes-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Miles, AJ
(Alistair) 
Sent: 11 August 2004 17:33
To: 'public-esw-thes@w3.org'
Subject: RE: [Proposal][SKOS-Core] handling top concepts



Any last objections before I action this proposal [1] ?

Al.

[1]
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-esw-thes/2004Aug/0002.html

---
Alistair Miles
Research Associate
CCLRC - Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Building R1 Room 1.60
Fermi Avenue
Chilton
Didcot
Oxfordshire OX11 0QX
United Kingdom
Email:        a.j.miles@rl.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)1235 445440



> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-esw-thes-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:public-esw-thes-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Dave Beckett
> Sent: 10 August 2004 13:57
> To: Dan Brickley
> Cc: Miles, AJ (Alistair) ; 'Supekar, Kaustubh S.'; 
> 'public-esw-thes@w3.org'
> Subject: Re: [Proposal][SKOS-Core] handling top concepts
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, 4 Aug 2004 12:09:20 -0400, Dan Brickley <danbri@w3.org> wrote:

> ...
> 
> > Thanks, this identifies a discomfort I've had w/
> interactions between
> > 'top concept' notion and thesaurus mixing. At heart you're saying
> > 'top concept' is a relation between a a scheme/dataset/thesaurus and
> > a concept. Makes sense to me.
> 
> This is why I suggested skos:hasTopConcept to Alistair.  You can't 
> promote one concept to 'top' in a shared web, since it might not be a 
> top concept in another thesaurus in the same graph.  It is a 
> relationship between the thesaurus and some concept(s).
> 
> > So would this be:
> > 
> > <owl:FunctionalProperty
> rdf:about="http:///....../skos/core#hasTopConcept"/>
> > 
> > ie. anything that has a skos:hasTopConcept has only one such thing?
> 
> No.  It may be 0 or more.  But if such a relationship exists
> it should be between
> the skos:ConceptScheme and some skos:Concept.  We had to pick
> a direction and it is most useful if it is written down (in 
> rdf/xml say)
> near the skos:ConceptScheme where other thesaurus-specific information
> is recorded since if you are considerign the thesarus itself, you want
> to see the general items about it - such as top concepts - if 
> the exist.
> Hence skos:hasTopConcept rather than skos:topConceptIn
> 
> Dave
>

Received on Friday, 13 August 2004 17:14:52 UTC