Re: Help with modeling my ontology

On 2/27/13 3:58 PM, Luca Matteis wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> At http://www.cropontology.org/ I'm trying to make things a little 
> more RDF friendly. For example, we have an ontology about Groundnut 
> here: http://www.cropontology.org/ontology/CO_337/Groundnut/ttl
>
> I'm generating this from a somewhat flat list of names/concepts, so 
> it's still a work in progress. But I'm having issues making sense of 
> it all so that the ontology can be used by people that actually have 
> Groundnut data.
>
> For example, in that Turtle dump, search for "Canopy height". This is 
> a concept that people might use to describe the height of the canopy 
> of their groundnut plant, as the comment describes (this should be a 
> Property not a Class, but like I said, it's still work-in-progress). 
> Let's try with some sample data someone might have about groundnut, 
> and see if I can further explain my issue (I assume co: is a prefix 
> for my cropontology.org <http://cropontology.org> site, also the URIs 
> are different but it's just an example):
>
>     :groundnut1
>       a co:Groundnut;
>       co:canopyHeight xxx .
>
> Ok here's the issue, we know that `canopyHeight` is measured using 
> different methodologies. For example it might be measured using a 
> methodology that we found to be described as "Measuring the distance 
> from the base to the tip of the main stem", but it might also be some 
> other method. And, funny enough, we also realized that it is measured 
> using centimeters, with a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 10cm.
>
> So how should I make this easier on the people that are using my 
> ontology? Should it be:
>
>     :groundnut1
>       a co:Groundnut;
>       co:canopyHeight "9.5cm" .
>
> or should it be:
>
>     :groundnut1
>       a co:Groundnut;
>       co:canopyHeight [
>         co:method "Measuring the distance from the base to the tip of 
> the main stem";
>         co:scale "9.5cm"
>       ] .
>
> Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way and should think more about 
> how this ontology is going to be used by people that have data about 
> it... but I'm not sure. Any advice would be great. And here's the 
> actual browsable list of concepts, in a tree sort of interface: 
> http://www.cropontology.org/terms/CO_337:0000039/
>
> As you can see there's this kind of thing happening all over the 
> ontology where we have the Property->the method it was measured-> and 
> finally the scale. Any help? Thanks!
>

Some options that cover units of measurement:

1. http://www.linkedmodel.org/catalog/qudt/1.1/index.html .
2. http://www.heppnetz.de/ontologies/goodrelations/v1.html#hasCurrency 
-- its currency, but you should get the gist.


-- 

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Kingsley Idehen	
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
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