- From: Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl>
- Date: Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:36:48 +0100
- To: Richard Cyganiak <richard@cyganiak.de>
- CC: Peter DeVries <pete.devries@gmail.com>, public-lod@w3.org, dmozzherin@gmail.com
Hi Richard, > > On 2 Dec 2009, at 02:40, Peter DeVries wrote: >> I was thinking that the species itself should be a class so that >> individuals >> of that species would be instances of that class. >> >> Probably another skos:Concept class. >> >> So an individual species concept class like that for the Cougar would >> be an >> instance of a skos:Concept (SpeciesConcept) class and also be a >> skos:Concept >> class (Cougar) of it's own. >> >> Individual animals would be instances of the skos:Concept class (Cougar). > > Two issues. > > 1. I don't think that individual animals should be typed as > skos:Concepts, but rather as something like ex:Specimen or ex:Animal. > So, the Cougar class should be a subclass of ex:Specimen or ex:Animal > rather than of skos:Concept. In the words of Bernard Vatant, > skos:Concepts are "library business objects" (or "taxonomist business > objects"?); Bob the cougar in the zoo next door doesn't seem to fit that > definition. Well, couldn't your questioning put the other way round? I thought that Peter was indeed starting from items that are very much "taxonomist business objects", hence very easy to represent as concepts. And in fact, while I understand that it is not very intuitive to have Bob the cougar as a skos:Concept (even though it is technically allowed), I see less problems for dealing this way with the class of cougars... Best, Antoine > > 2. I'm not sure if it's wise to use the same URI for the Cougar > "concept" and the Cougar "class". I don't think that this "punning" is > against any spec, but it will cause endless head-scratching among > potential users of your data. It would be more straightforward to mint a > separate URI for the class, and relating it 1:1 to the species concept > using an appropriate property (there's probably one in UMBEL; if not, > mint your own -- maybe "speciesClass"). Since you own the URI space > anyway, minting new URIs would be cheap. > > This kind of punning between concepts, things and classes is an > interesting issue, and I'm afraid that it's not yet well understood. > Avoiding it puts you on the safe side. > > That being said, can you talk a bit about your motivation for wanting to > re-use the same URI? > > Best, > Richard > > > >> >> This should work with OWL2 but I don't know how well it will work with >> the >> LOD. >> >> Also I created a VERY preliminary OWL document that would contain a much >> more complete representation of the species. >> >> My thoughts are that these OWL documents would be used to help determine >> what specimens are instances of what species concept. >> The goal would be to provide an OWL document for those who need a more >> complete description of what we mean by the URI, while >> also providing a much lighter RDF representation that could be used for >> concept mapping etc. >> >> However, I don't know if I am going about this in the right way. >> >> Below are my VERY preliminary examples of what these OWL documents might >> look like. >> >> The example has some attributes that I thought should be included in a >> species document, but it does not have everything that would like to >> eventually include. >> >> http://rdf.taxonconcept.org/owlses/v6n7p/2009-12-01.owl >> >> Doc's at http://rdf.taxonconcept.org/owlses/v6n7p/owl_doc/index.html >> >> The common classes etc, would eventually be moved to a separate ontology >> that would be imported into each individual species ontology. >> >> And these ontologies will need to be fixed so that they work together, I >> don't think they do right now. >> >> Thanks in Advance, :-) >> >> - Pete >> ---------------------------------------------------------------- >> Pete DeVries >> Department of Entomology >> University of Wisconsin - Madison >> 445 Russell Laboratories >> 1630 Linden Drive >> Madison, WI 53706 >> GeoSpecies Knowledge Base >> About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base >> ------------------------------------------------------------ > > >
Received on Wednesday, 2 December 2009 16:01:31 UTC