Skos mapping issues

Hi All,

I am interested in the mapping of thesauri, so I have been reviewing the
documentation available in the SKOS-Project. It seems that there is three main
documents related with SKOS mapping in SKOS project [1,2,3].

Each one present a quite different approach to mapping representation. The last
two documents it seems that try to simplify the skos mapping vocabulary.

They map the partial and inexact equivalence relationships to other existent
relations in SKOS core. The partial relationship is mapped to skos:broader and
skos:narrower and the inexact is mapped or to skos:related or to a new
skos:overlappingConcept.

I agree that the semantic of the partial equivalence relationship is equivalent
to the broader and narrower relationship. However, I think that the use of the
same property would difficult the identification of the mappings respect to the
basic ones. I think that at least the namespaces should be changed (e.g:
skosm.broader). This properties can be an specialization
of the basic ones. This would facilitate the separation of the mappings to the
core structure of each thesauri.

I do not agree with the use of skos:related as inexact equivalence exposed in
[2]. I think they are different. An inexact equivalence indicates
that two concepts share some meaning and that not always happen with the more
general skos:related relationship.
A inexact equivalence relationship can be seen as an specialization of
skos:related given that indicate a relationship
between the concepts but not in the other way.

Respect to the compositions of mappings through "and", "or" and "not"
relationships I think that to be able to create complex compositions as
(A and B and (C or (D and E))), it would be needed a specialization of skos
concept (called for example conceptCollection) to group all the composed
concepts and the type of composition.

I see that there are some similarities in the "and" relationship respect to the
pre-coordination of labels in a thesaurus, and also
respect to the composition in USE relationship to refer from a complex label to
two simpler ones. However, I think they are
some semantic differences between the "and" and the coordination making them not
completely interchangeable.

[1] http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/mapping/spec/
[2] http://isegserv.itd.rl.ac.uk/public/skos/press/dc2006/mapping.html
[3] http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/wiki/SkosDesign/ConceptualMapping/ProposalOne

Best Regards,
Javier

Received on Saturday, 21 July 2007 16:38:52 UTC