RE: SKOS to RDFS/OWL ontology mapping

Hi Bernard,

I like your usage scenarios, they'll be really useful when trying to write this up.  

> A subject in Topic Maps in just that unameit. Define a topic 
> of which subject is this
> unameit, of which both eg:People and foaf:Person are 
> *occurrences*, with
> "a:defined-by-OWL" and "a:defined-by-SKOS" as their 
> respective occurrence types. This is
> just as (un)formal as can be, and catches exactly what you 
> want to say.
> 
> Simple and clean. No vocabulary issues of "denotation" or whatever.
> 

Er... isn't this bending the TM notion of an 'occurrence' somewhat?  

Also doesn't this just introduce an intermediate in the mapping?  I'm not sure that going through topic maps to get from a SKOS concept to an OWL class and back would be practical?  

And I think you'll find yourself going round in circles when you try to represent the above in RDF.  Because you could use RDF to say that 'the subject of topic X is a class' or 'the subject of topic Y is a concept.'  The TM notion of a 'subject' and the RDF notion of a 'resource' are essentially identical (i.e. they are the 'things' that we make 'statements' about).  Therefore asserting the right sort of mapping relationship between two things depends alot on what sort of things they are, and not at all on the language/formalism (i.e. RDF, TM, whatever ...) that is being used to make the statements about them.

I've got this nagging feeling that if I understand RDF semantics I'd be able to make sense of all this.  Is there anything good on the web explaining (for a dunce) what a 'model theory' or an 'interpretation' is?

Cheers,

Al.




> OK. Now write it in RDF ...
> 
> Bernard
> 
> **************************************************************
> ********************
> 
> Bernard Vatant
> Senior Consultant
> Knowledge Engineering
> bernard.vatant@mondeca.com
> 
> "Making Sense of Content" :  http://www.mondeca.com
> "Everything is a Subject" :  http://universimmedia.blogspot.com
> 
> **************************************************************
> ********************
> 
> > -----Message d'origine-----
> > De : public-esw-thes-request@w3.org
> > [mailto:public-esw-thes-request@w3.org]De la part de Miles, AJ
> > (Alistair)
> > Envoyé : jeudi 2 juin 2005 19:54
> > À : public-esw-thes@w3.org
> > Cc : Dan Brickley (E-mail)
> > Objet : SKOS to RDFS/OWL ontology mapping
> >
> >
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Danbri and I talked some more in Amsterdam last week about 
> the requirement to
> > be able to assert a relationship between a concept in a 
> SKOS concept scheme and
> > a class, individual or property in an RDFS/OWL ontology.
> >
> > For example, I may have the following ...
> >
> >   eg:A a skos:Concept; skos:prefLabel 'People'.
> >
> > ... and I want to assert a relationship between eg:A and 
> the foaf:Person class.
> >
> > Or another example, I may have ...
> >
> >   eg:B a skos:Concept; skos:prefLabel 'Tony Blair'; 
> skos:broader eg:A.
> >
> >   eg:C a foaf:Person; foaf:name 'Tony Blair'.
> >
> > ... and I want to assert a relationship between eg:B and eg:C.
> >
> > This is revisiting a discussion we had on this list last 
> year, in relation to a
> > proposal for a 'skos:denotes' property, see thread starting 
> from [1].
> >
> > See also the section 'Relationship to RDFS/OWL Ontologies' 
> in the SKOS Core Guide [2].
> >
> > Danbri has convinced me that a property for asserting a 
> relationship between a
> > resource that is a SKOS concept, and resource that is an
> > individual/class?/property? in an RDFS/OWL ontology, where 
> the former is an
> > 'abstraction' or 'conceptualisation' of the latter, would 
> be a good idea.
> > Danbri has some sound practical reasons why this is worth 
> considering, which
> > I'll leave to him to describe :)
> >
> > The proposal last year was for a property called 
> 'skos:denotes', but I didn't
> > think the name was right, and we spent some time trying to 
> come up with
> > alternatives.  The best we have so far is for a pair of 
> inverse properties
> > called 'skos:it' and 'skos:as', where 'skos:it' points from 
> a SKOS concept to
> > some thing in an ontology that it is a conceptualisation 
> of, and 'skos:as'
> > points in the other direction.
> >
> > I think, rather than getting bogged down in whether one 
> resource is really an
> > 'abstraction' or 'conceptualisation' of another, or which 
> resources are
> > 'abstract' versus which resources are 'real' (which is 
> possibly as confusing as
> > trying to answer the question: does philosophy exist?) we 
> should focus on the
> > practical problem of trying to link these two modelling paradigms
> > (thesauri/terminologies and ontologies) which are now 
> living side by side in RDF.
> >
> > So the two questions to consider are: (1) should we put 
> some sort of property
> > pair for linking SKOS concept schemes to RDFS/OWL 
> ontologies into SKOS Core,
> > and (2) if so, what should they be called?
> >
> > Without wanting to detract from the seriousness of this 
> proposal, as a humorous
> > aside Danbri has pointed out that 'skos:it' would look 
> great on a t-shirt.
> >
> > I'll leave it there for now.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Al.
> >
> > [1] 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-esw-thes/2004Sep/0041.html
> [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-swbp-skos-core-guide-20050510/#secmodellingrdf
>
> ---
> 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
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 14 June 2005 16:33:00 UTC