Re: Visual Rendering of OWL ontologies?

Hi Alan,

Actually I'm not suggesting anything so far, I just wanted to open it up 
for discussion. 
It may well be that if there is an activity to conduct here, it fits 
better with OWLED
than with OWL-WG, so apologies if I have not gone about this the right way.
However I didn't want to pre-judge whether there should be an activity, 
or what kind
of an activity it might be.

Bijan and Ivan recommended to me to shift this page to the official WG 
wiki (I guess that
indicates they think it should be an OWL-WG concern rather than an OWLED 
one?),
and it is now at

    http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/UML_Concrete_Syntax

with the OWLED  page as a forward pointer:
    http://code.google.com/p/owl1-1/wiki/UMLGraphicalNotation

Again apologies if I have gone about things the wrong way.  I am 
relatively new to the group
and appreciate the clarification.

Just so I can be clear on the distinction - should I take it then that 
the OWL-CNL task force has no official
status within the OWL-WG?

Thanks

Anne


Alan Ruttenberg wrote:
> Hi Anne,
>
> I'm uncertain whether you are suggesting an activity for the working 
> group, or an OWLED activity. You mentioned this in the same sentence 
> as CNL, which is an OWLED Task force. The distinction is that OWLED 
> Task forces are generally conceived as sort of incubation projects for 
> a future version of OWL focused on topics that are of interest but 
> need development, and it would  seems that this project would fall 
> into that category.
>
> If an OWLED activity, a better place to have the discussion would be 
> the public-owl-dev@w3.org discussion list. (Most of us read both, but 
> the owl dev list allows posting by more than working group members).
>
> Regards,
> Alan
>
> On Nov 11, 2007, at 2:20 AM, Anne Cregan wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I've received some replies off-list, particularly some details of the 
>> UML profiles developed for OWL and RDF as part of the ODM.
>>
>> One thing I would particularly like to clarify (as Bijan highlighted 
>> to me) is that this thread is intended to address a visual *notation* 
>> for OWL,
>> not the visualization of ontologies in a broader sense.
>>
>> I've started a wiki page to capture details of the various Graphical 
>> Notations for OWL and RDF that have been developed to date:
>>
>> http://code.google.com/p/owl1-1/wiki/GraphicalNotation
>>
>> Please contribute any more you are aware of.
>>
>>
>> I've also recorded some details of the UML Graphical Notation 
>> developed for RDF and OWL1.0 within the ODM, in a linked page at
>>
>> http://code.google.com/p/owl1-1/wiki/UMLGraphicalNotation
>>
>> This info was kindly provided by Elisa Kendall, who was closely 
>> involved in the development effort.
>>
>>
>> Best Regards,
>> Anne
>>
>>
>> Anne Cregan wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Alexander,
>>> Please see comments below
>>>
>>> Alexander Garcia Castro wrote:
>>>> My five cents:
>>>>
>>>> independent of any ontology editor
>>>>
>>>> from my experience the graphical representation of the ontology should
>>>> not be kept separated from the manipulation of OWL constructs. the
>>>> graphical representation should also provide the means for direct
>>>> manipulation. Editors such as Protege have a lot of visual aids, all
>>>> of them are separated from the editing process. This, in practical
>>>> terms, means that one always has to go back to the hard-to-manage
>>>> tree-like-hierarchy. A good example that illustrates the importance of
>>>> this relationship (editing and visualizing)  comes from very advanced
>>>> IDEs such as JDEVELOPER, JBUILDER, etc. For these IDEs the
>>>> visualization facilitates the manipulation of those constructs the
>>>> language provides, also facilitates the processes one has to run as a
>>>> programmer.
>>>>
>>> I wasn't meaning in any way to devalue your work - I think it's a 
>>> fantastic idea to be able to edit
>>> ontologies graphically, and I'm really looking forward to trying out 
>>> your stuff!
>>>
>>> My motivation was more from the angle of : now we have this ontology 
>>> and we want to show it to
>>> people in some generally acceptable way.  I often find myself 
>>> preparing presentations that show
>>> ontologies (or at least try to!) and I'd just like to have some 
>>> consensus on what shape is a class,
>>> what does a property look like, what does a restriction look like 
>>> etc, so that people can easily interpret
>>> what they are seeing in the way they currently can with E-R diagrams 
>>> for instance.
>>>
>>>> do working group members have any strong feeling about a preferred way
>>>>
>>>>> to do it?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> In my opinion this is problem dependent. Not only depends on the
>>>> ontology at hand, but also the "what do you need the visualization
>>>> for" affects the choice.
>>>>
>>> That's a good point, and part of the nature and power of ontologies 
>>> is their ability to be
>>> viewed and used from many "angles" (by class, by property, by 
>>> individual etc).  It may well not be
>>> just one view but several related views that we will need.  It may 
>>> not be realistic to expect to capture
>>> a whole ontology in just one diagram.
>>>
>>>>  do we want to discuss the approaches and perhaps consider moving
>>>>
>>>>> towards a recommended approach?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> An open discussion may lead to a series of recommendations. that would
>>>> be nice. I could in that way enrich my plug in, and the rest of the
>>>> tools we are currently planning to develop.
>>>>
>>> I think something like what Vipul suggested - a UML-like 
>>> representation - is worth pursuing.
>>> I look forward to comments from those in the community who have 
>>> worked on the ODM and
>>> may have some valuable advice here.
>>>>
>>>>> We already have a task force working an English syntax for OWL1.1,
>>>>> perhaps we might want to consider
>>>>> a task force working towards agreeing on a visual representation 
>>>>> as well.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> This representation along with the corresponding graphical environment
>>>> should facilitate the development of ontologies by domain experts.
>>>> Even if it is just at the level of a baseline ontology.
>>>>
>>> I agree, although IMHO even domain experts should get their hands 
>>> dirty and use the tools, not
>>> just look at static diagrams!
>>>
>>> Best Regards,
>>> Anne
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Nov 10, 2007 4:47 AM, Anne Cregan <Anne.Cregan@nicta.com.au> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi everyone,
>>>>>
>>>>> I have lately seen several approaches to visual rendering of 
>>>>> ontologies
>>>>> (see details below).
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm wondering how the group feel about the visual representation of
>>>>> ontologies as diagrams
>>>>> independent of any ontology editor:
>>>>> - do working group members have any strong feeling about a 
>>>>> preferred way
>>>>> to do it?
>>>>> - do we want to discuss the approaches and perhaps consider moving
>>>>> towards a recommended approach?
>>>>>
>>>>> We already have a task force working an English syntax for OWL1.1,
>>>>> perhaps we might want to consider
>>>>> a task force working towards agreeing on a visual representation 
>>>>> as well.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thoughts and comments invited.
>>>>>
>>>>> Best Regards,
>>>>> Anne
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Posting today on CG list from Alexander Garcia Castro 
>>>>> <alexgarciac@gmail.com
>>>>>
>>>>>> We have developed a new tool that facilitates the generation of
>>>>>> ontologies in  graphical way. The tool is a plug-in for Protege, it
>>>>>> uses all of Protege OWL plug in in order to facilitate the direct
>>>>>> manipulation of OWL constructs. In this way domain experts are 
>>>>>> able to
>>>>>> build ontologies in a simple and intuitive manner, the plug-in also
>>>>>> allows users to load pre-existing ontologies and edit them by using
>>>>>> the same graphical features. The tool is available at
>>>>>> http://map2owl.sourceforge.net/, initially our web site is only in
>>>>>> Spanish, an English version is on the pipe.
>>>>>>
>>>>> There's also a tool called VisioOWL
>>>>> http://mysite.verizon.net/jflynn12/VisioOWL/VisioOWL.htm
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> VisioOWL is a Microsoft Visio application to support the use of 
>>>>>> Visio
>>>>>> for creating graphical representations of OWL ontologies. This
>>>>>> implementation is intended to provide, as close as possible, a 
>>>>>> direct
>>>>>> one-to-one mapping between the OWL language constructs and their
>>>>>> graphical representation. The graphical representation of an OWL
>>>>>> ontology may provide, for some developers and users, a more
>>>>>> comprehensive insight into overall class and property relationships
>>>>>> than could be garnered from the OWL markup alone.
>>>>>>
>>>>> The contact listed is John Flynn jflynn12@verizon.net
>>>>>
>>>>> I believe there's also a UML-aligned approach as developed as part 
>>>>> of the OMG Ontology Metamodel
>>>>> led by Evan Wallace ewallace@nist.gov
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.omg.org/ontology/
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>

Received on Monday, 12 November 2007 03:38:25 UTC