Re: SKOS tools?

Simon,

For Marine Metadata Interoperability project, we found a similar need.  
Our relatively narrow solutions are just in alpha release; development  
is ongoing.  We are not proposing these as solutions for the entire  
semantic web community, as they are scaled just to the environmental  
science community (figure order of 1000 vocabularies for now, mostly  
small); but some may find the strategy or code useful.

For the basic use case of transforming a simple vocabulary into SKOS  
and working with it, we created voc2rdf [1].  We have just rolled out  
a version that supports round trip editing with simple tables (if the  
starting point is voc2rdf).

For mapping of ontology concepts, including SKOS, we have developed  
the VINE mapping tool [2]. It is currently in a standalone  
application, but is being rewritten to be a web service.  It provides  
an efficient environment specifically for connecting ontological  
concepts. (We haven't compared its use to similar functionality in  
NeOn and Protege plugins, nor to anything available via TopBraid.)

I'm sorry, these aren't fully documented and ready for exhaustive  
public test/evaluation yet, but they give an idea of our direction.   
For the scale you indicated for Steve (25 vocabularies), this may be  
sufficient. My experience so far is that communities that want more  
may be willing to migrate to more advanced tools.

Responding to the main thrust of your post, I have been disappointed  
also with the state of semantic tools.  I am convinced this (OWL, RDF,  
SKOS) is the best approach for consolidating scientific semantics in  
the short (5 years) term, but given the amount of time these standards  
have been evolving and their level of use, I would have expected many  
more user-friendly tools.  The existing tools are pretty expert-focused.

Maybe this is due to the semantic community focusing more on the  
advanced conceptual capabilities in the semantic web. Or maybe it's as  
one semantic web person said recently: "Do you really want to give the  
average user the ability to produce OWL?"  I thought so, but maybe I'm  
being naive.

John


[1] http://marinemetadata.org/voc2rdf
[2] http://marinemetadata.org/vine


On Jun 17, 2009, at 6:53 PM, <Simon.Cox@csiro.au> <Simon.Cox@csiro.au>  
wrote:

> Dear SKOS list -
>
> The GeoSciML project has been evaluating SKOS to implement its  
> 'controlled concpet' model (see http://www.geosciml.org/geosciml/2.0/doc/GeoSciML/Vocabulary/package-summary.html 
>  for the UML representation, and you'll see how SKOS is a close  
> match!).
> My colleague Steve Richard is the lead editor, on behalf of a  
> consortium including many of the world's leading geological  
> surveys*, for around 25 vocabularies related to geology.
> This is a significant effort in the natural sciences.
>
> Being a happy old XML hacker I can tolerate RDF/XML and a text  
> editor for prototyping.
> But this obviously ain't acceptable for most users, doesn't scale to  
> production work, and fails to provide the consistency checking and  
> visualization that a proper editor would.
>
> We are mighty frustrated (and getting worse!) at the state of tool  
> support.
> In particular, Protégé, even with the SKOS plugin, appears to be  
> fatally flawed.
> I've used it from time to time for _viewing_ a concept scheme, but  
> have never been able to successfully round trip through export/ 
> import, so it doesn't work as an editor.
> Steve is now finding further flaws - see below - e.g. labels  
> implemented as objectProperty, no literal support or language  
> attributes.
>
> This is all very disappointing.
> What tools are people people using successfully for development and  
> management of SKOS instances?
>
> Simon Cox
>
> (*) See http://onegeology.org/technical_progress/geosciml.html and http://onegeology.org/participants/graphical_map.html
>
> ______
> Simon.Cox@csiro.au  CSIRO Exploration & Mining
> 26 Dick Perry Avenue, Kensington WA 6151
> PO Box 1130, Bentley WA 6102  AUSTRALIA
> T: +61 (0)8 6436 8639  Cell: +61 (0) 403 302 672
> Polycom PVX: 130.116.146.28
> <http://www.csiro.au>
>
> ABN: 41 687 119 230
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stephen richard [mailto:steve.richard@azgs.az.gov]
> Sent: Thursday, 18 June 2009 9:31 AM
> To: Cox, Simon (E&M, Kensington)
> Subject: Re: [Auscope-geosciml] Simple lithology vocabulary in MMI  
> repository
>
> Right now I'm mostly frustrated-
> the new version of Protege (v4, released today) doesn't preserve  
> language attributes on prefLabel elements, and the SKOS tool models  
> prefLabel as an ObjectProperty, so you can't populate it with a  
> literal, and it doesn't appear to be consistent with the current  
> SKOS spec.
> What I started out to do was clean up the hierarchy in  
> standardLithology, which is a mess. The owl/SKOS tools looked like a  
> possible way to do it. Instead I've spun my wheels for 3 days. The  
> idea is simply to be able to round trip between GeologicVocabulary  
> and some brand of SKOS, for which there is a functional tool, build  
> and fix hierarchies in SKOS, and convert back to GeologicVocabulary  
> to update in the BRGM repository. Meanwhile there are the  
> possibilities of vocabulary services that could assist with document  
> validation and better yet query resolution with hierarchical  
> properties...
>
> What's AuScope using for SKOS tools?
>
> steve
>
> Simon.Cox@csiro.au wrote:
>> Steve
>> Good hunting.
>>
>> A few comments and a bit of an update about where the AuScope  
>> vocabs/vocab-server work is at:
>>
>>
>> i. Terms and Labels -
>> skos:prefLabel, skos:altLabel, skos:hiddenLabel and skos:notation  
>> can and should be used to support the assignment of multi-lingual  
>> terms, synonyms, misspellings (!) and symbols to concepts,  
>> regardless of the encoding (OWL, SKOS, other RDF languages). The  
>> semantics of these are clear and relevant to our needs, and the  
>> rdfs:domain of all of these is unrestricted so they can be applied  
>> to any rdf resource.
>>
>>
> ...
>
> --
> Stephen M. Richard
> Section Chief, Geoinformatics
> Arizona Geological Survey
> 416 W. Congress St., #100
> Tucson, Arizona, 85701 USA
>
> Phone:
> Office: (520) 209-4127
> Reception: (520) 770-3500
> FAX: (520) 770-3505
>
> email: steve.richard@azgs.az.gov
>
>


John

--------------
John Graybeal   <mailto:graybeal@mbari.org>  -- 831-775-1956
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Marine Metadata Interoperability Project: http://marinemetadata.org

Received on Thursday, 18 June 2009 16:51:51 UTC