Re: Attribute or Property Ontology?

Hi Krzysztof,

What I am trying to get at is a coherent ontology of attributes that can 
be used for mapping ABox instance data for integration and 
interoperability purposes. The general idea is to have a reference 
grounding upon which external semantic datasets can co-reference as a 
bridging mechanism.

As one example, let's say that dataset A describes location of an entity 
with the attribute country, and only provides literal values, whereas 
another dataset B describes location with object properties by ISO 
country code. The reference grounding could be an ontology with the 
complete listing of ISO country codes. This is not the simplest example, 
since the literal in dataset A would need to be evaluated and lifted to 
the reference object property. Probably some user interface would need 
to be involved to reconcile uncertainties, making the process 
semi-automatic.

Other examples may not involve lifting, but may involve unit conversions 
or other manipulations. Those, too, would likely need to be semi-automatic.

On the face of it, the scope may sound daunting. But, my observation is 
that most attributes (explicitly used to describe entities) follow a 
Pareto distribution and the number of commonly used attributes (say, 
between schema.org, Wikidata, and other leading KBs) is tractable. Once 
a suitable design and starting framework was in place, grounding values 
could continue to be expanded, as well as possible lifting and 
conversion utilities.

The advantage of this approach to dataset/KB authors is that only one 
mapping need to be made to the reference grounding. Thereafter, other 
datasets mapping to the same attribute(s) could be inspected for 
possible interoperability.

UMBEL, as a subset of Cyc, already has about 2000+ of its concepts 
already assigned to the attribute SuperType [1]. I was able to rather 
quickly pull together one initial high-level view for 90 or so of them 
to construct what such a attribute concept structure may look like:

Attributes   
 ObjectValueCharacteristics  
  StringObject 
   StringDatatype_Unlimited
  List_Information 
   FrequentlyAskedQuestionsList
   MailingList
   AlphabeticalList
   Index_List_Information
   BullettedFormat
  UnitOfMeasure 
   UnitOfDistance
   InternationalUnitOfMeasure
   UnitOfMeasure_Common
  NaturalLanguage 
  Encrypted 
  AuthenticationSource 
  PersistenceDistribution 
   Uniform_PersistenceDistribution
  UnitOfMeasureConcept 
   Ratio
  CollectionType 
   Phase
   EmptyCollection
   Preference
  Quantity 
  AttachmentAttribute 
   WrittenInfo
   StructuredInfo
   VisualInfo
   AudioInfo
  LogicalFieldAttribute 
  TruthValue 
 EntityCharacteristics  
  DescriptiveAttributes 
   Definition_PCW
   VisualPattern
   SpatialThingTypeByShape
   ShapeAttributes
   Color
   Name
   Title
  EnumeratedAttributes 
   EconomicalQuantity
   DispositionalQuantity
   MentalQuantity
   PhysicalQuantity
   Quality
   SocialQuantity
   MeasurableQuantity
   TotallyOrderedQuantityType
   QuantityType
   NonAspectualQuantity
   EnvironmentalQuantity
   ActionAttributeLevelQuantity
   EmotionalQuantityType
  LocationAttributes 
   OrientationAttributes
   GeographicalPlace
   MappableAttributes
   ContactLocation
   PopulatedPlace
  TimeAttributes 
   HistoricTemporalThing
   Time_Quantity
   EventAttributes
   TimeInterval
   TemporalThing
  IdentificationAttributes 
   ContactLocation
   ReferenceWork
   IDString
   UniqueID
  SituationAttributes 
   Situation
Qualifier   
Statement   
Collection   
 'Ordered Collection'  
Individual   
'Concept Scheme'   
Class   
Concept   
 Statement  
 Class  
 RefConcept  


This is *very* preliminary, and some of the names don't yet feel right. 
Also, there are some new concepts added (which need to be checked in 
Cyc) for better organization. But it does try to capture one 
more-or-less high-level view of the outlines for this structure. SIO has 
a different, but similar, approach.

I am purposefully excluding "relations" between entity types in this 
thinking. Rather, I am focusing strictly on the instance descriptions 
and characterizations (attributes). For the attributes as defined, 
however, both bundles and hierarchies are of interest.

Does this help?

If so and there is a relationship with your own geographic interests, 
perhaps we can talk offline. Since I envision this reference grounding 
having common use, geographic attributes would definitely be included, 
as shown above.

Best, Mike

[1] See Annex G at http://umbel.org/annexes/

On 7/11/2014 1:08 PM, Krzysztof Janowicz wrote:
> SIO looks really interesting! Thanks for sharing. Just to make sure we
> all talk about the same. Mike, are you looking for bundles of relations
> and attributes that characterize types or hierarchies of relations and
> attributes? We are doing the first for geographic feature types (e.g.,
> state) if this would be of any interest to you.
>
> Best,
> Krzysztof
>
>
> On 07/11/2014 10:49 AM, Michel Dumontier wrote:
>> Hi Mike,
>>    We have done some work in SIO [1] to guide the development of
>> descriptive and quantitative attributes. We have a recently published
>> paper [2] that articulates some of our design decisions, and how we
>> use them in our work. Happy to work with you on your use cases in the
>> context of our public mailing list [3]
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> m.
>>
>> [1] http://sio.semanticscience.org
>> [2] http://www.jbiomedsem.com/content/5/1/14
>> [3] http://groups.google.com/group/sio-ontology
>> Michel Dumontier
>> Associate Professor of Medicine (Biomedical Informatics), Stanford
>> University
>> Chair, W3C Semantic Web for Health Care and the Life Sciences Interest
>> Group
>> http://dumontierlab.com

Received on Tuesday, 15 July 2014 06:40:52 UTC