Re: Ontology modules and namespaces

A good question.

Forwarding the conversation to Ontolog-Forum and SIOC-Dev lists as their 
subscribers may also have interesting insights.

Simon Reinhardt wrote:
> Hi,
>
> It is becoming somewhat popular for large ontologies to be split into 
> a core ontology file and module ontology files (which import the 
> core). Normally each module then gets its own namespace for the terms 
> defined in it. I was wondering though if that is too complicated for 
> users of the ontologies. I have seen confusion of "sioc" and "sioct" 
> (the prefixes for the SIOC core and the SIOC Types module namespaces) 
> and when such vocabularies get higher adoption by people not so well 
> versed with ontologies I can see it happen a lot more often.
>
> So as an alternative I want to explore the idea of just using one 
> namespace shared between the core and the modules. The advantage would 
> be not having to guess which namespace to use. One disadvantage for 
> the developer(s) of the ontology is that a "local name" can only be 
> used in one of the modules or core, you can't use the same "word" 
> under a different namespace with a different meaning. Another 
> disadvantage is that if you want the terms to dereference to the 
> ontology files they have been defined in then you can only do that 
> with a "/" namespace (and you have to set up lots of redirects).
>
> My questions: What do you think of that idea? Can you see any other 
> advantages or disadvantages? Do you think several namespaces are not 
> confusing at all? And what are the main advantages to splitting up 
> ontologies into modules other than being easier to organise? Do they 
> justify a higher burden on the ontology users?
>
> Thanks,
>  Simon
>

Received on Tuesday, 27 October 2009 00:48:35 UTC