Re: Any reason for ontology reuse?

Martijn,

> What I personally miss in the current linked data development is a service
where I can search existing properties/classes when
> publishing structured data. Sometimes it takes 5/10min to find (1) the
right ontology and (2) the right property/class, or in worst case I
> end up with nothing, but this is maybe a discussion for an other thread.

I agree with that, I'm a master student as you, and I have the same problem
which we tried to solve with some techniques of
ontology matching in "a priori" approach in the process of publishing data
from relational databases.[1]
but after the tool development and some case study we recognize some
problems.

   1. The lack of one "formal list" of ontologies which I can use in the
   reuse process
   made it from some organization (for instance W3C).
   what I mean by a "formal list" is a list of ontologies that have two
   minimum
   characteristics permanence and popularity.
   in my view, the closest "formal list" is [2] but I'm not sure about the
   permanence and popularity attributes.

   2. As you mentioned before an ontology searcher which could help me in
   the
   reuse process.
   Ontology searcher as Watson[3], Swoogle[4] unfortunately do not take into
   consideration the popularity of the term(property/class) and/or the
   permanence of the URL.

Best,

Percy

[1]
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1839707.1839760&coll=Portal&dl=GUIDE
[2][http://esw.w3.org/Ontology_Dowsing
[3]http://kmi-web05.open.ac.uk/WatsonWUI/
[4]http://swoogle.umbc.edu/


2010/12/5 Martijn van der Plaat <martijn@profec.nl>

> Hi all,
>
> As a master student Information Sciences at the VU Amsterdam and interested
> in LOD (and SemWeb as a whole) I recently started reading this mailinglist.
> The first discussion I tried to follow was the "is 303 really necessary?"
> Topic initiated by Ian Davis. Well, after response nr. 10^2 I was totally
> confused and almost decided to unsubscribe!
> OK, now back on topic. I like both the explanation from Toby and Martin.
> But the problem of knowing the popularity of the *whole* ontology, mentioned
> somewhere in the comments, is IMO not interesting since in most cases a
> data-publisher will use only parts of the ontology.
> Also I dont believe in the added NL analogy by claiming that publishing
> ideas in more than one type of ontology is a good thing. Why? Eg. The fact
> that more and more datapublishers are using GoodRelations is already a great
> development, imagine that every commercial sector is introducing their own
> ontology, except the inherited ontologies of in this case GR. I dont believe
> in automated ontology alignment technologies from this point of view. Maybe
> translating *instances* of a certain popular ontology to your own language
> is a better analogy?
>
> What I personally miss in the current linked data development is a service
> where I can search existing properties/classes when publishing structured
> data. Sometimes it takes 5/10min to find (1) the right ontology and (2) the
> right property/class, or in worst case I end up with nothing, but this is
> maybe a discussion for an other thread.
>
> Cheers,
> Martijn van der Plaat
>
> Op 4 dec 2010 21:30 schreef "ProjectParadigm-ICT-Program" <
> metadataportals@yahoo.com>:
>
> Dear Martin,
>
> Ad Rule 1. Is true if we can assume the builder of the ontology has built
> something which is good according to some measurable criteria. For this we
> have standards and procedures to arrive at standardized sets. We cannot be
> sloppy when building ontologies e.g. for civil engineering, aerospace,
> pharmacy, medicine, biodiversity or defense technologies, so why should we
> then allow sloppy ontologies for most other fields?
>
> Ad Rule 2. More popular and better quality yes , more popular but probably
> of less quality no. But who makes the judgment calls? The collective of
> users is never a good judge.
>
> Rules 3 and 4 presuppose that somehow the person building his own ontology
> or who must pick one from those available has the tools to determine which
> is best, or how to make a good ontology.
>
> Knowledge and information depend on accurate, for scientific reasons
> unambiguous recording in natural language, which requires accurate
> terminology, definitions etc.
>
> The same rigid structures that dictate natural language vocabularies an
> dictionaries have to apply to ontology engineering as well.
>
> I can safely assume that most of the subscribers to our lists have the
> intuitive skills to know good from bad ontologies and what is the right
> practical approach to building a good ontology, but when semantic
> technologies go mainstream, a lot of people will join the fray who don't, so
> somewhere along the line some standardization and formal procedures must be
> introduced.
>
> Dictionaries exist for a reason, and they are made based on corpora and
> lexicological tools by specialized linguists, and for a good reason,
> according to standards and standardized procedures for arriving at such.
>
> And since ontologies are structured mirror images of natural language
> domains it is inevitable and inescapable that good standard ontologies
> should reflect this as well.
>
> Like in many fields of science and engineering, good rules of thumb are
> always created by specialists from the same fields who can reduce many
> rules, standards, based on expert experience to a few rules.
>
> It is this innate ability to create rules of thumb that must be captured in
> procedures for ontology engineering.
>
> No easy task, but not impossible, and not without standards and
> methodology, but as bare-bones as possible, because languages are dynamic
> and flexible and ever evolving.
>
> Milton Ponson
> GSM: +297 747 8280
> PO Box 1154, Oranjestad
> Aruba, Dutch Caribbean
> Project Paradigm: A structured approach to bringing the tools for
> sustainable development to all stakeholders worldwide by creating ICT
> tools for NGOs worldwide and: providing online access to web sites and
> repositories of data and information for sustainable development
>
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> --- On *Sat, 12/4/10, Martin Hepp <martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org>*wrote:
>
>
> From: Martin Hepp <martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org>
> Subject: Re: Any reason for ontology reuse?
> To: "Toby Inkster" <tai@g5n.co.uk>
> Cc: "Percy Enrique Rivera Salas" <privera.salas@gmail.com>,
> public-lod@w3.org, "Semantic Web" <semantic-web@w3.org>
> Date: Saturday, December 4, 2010, 1:07 PM
>
>
> >
> > Simple rules:
> >
> > 1. It is better to use an existing ontology than inventing your own.
> > 2. It ...
>
>
>