- From: Richard Cyganiak <richard@cyganiak.de>
- Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2009 10:33:29 +0100
- To: Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl>
- Cc: Peter DeVries <pete.devries@gmail.com>, public-lod@w3.org, dmozzherin@gmail.com
On 2 Dec 2009, at 16:36, Antoine Isaac wrote: >> 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. One simply has to be aware that skos:Concepts in a skos:ConceptScheme are not the same as the real-world entities they stand for, and Peter has to be clear which one he is talking about. > 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... Mentioning that you see less problems without going into any detail is not exactly useful. I see more problems. Best, Richard > > 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 Thursday, 3 December 2009 09:34:08 UTC