Re: Role of the Ontology and Expressivity - to discuss on telcon

Hi Ted,

I'm trying to understand your position.

On 27 Apr 2010, at 10:31, Ted Thibodeau Jr wrote:
> Bringing RDB into RDF requires only that the schema of that RDB be
> mapped to a "direct" or "putative" ontology -- which *is* the correct
> term.

Well, the charter is unfortunately not very explicit about what it  
means to map a database to RDF.

Just to be explicit: Is your position that mapping to domain  
ontologies such as FOAF, GoodRelations etc is out of scope of the  
charter? Or is your position that it's merely not required to meet the  
success criteria set out in the charter?

> This ontology serves only to unambiguously identify a single
> cell (table, column, row) within that schema.
>
> I suggest that then mapping that RDF into a "domain" ontology (e.g.,
> SNOMED) is a separate concern -- which may be addressed in a couple
> of ways --
>
> 1. replication with transformation
> 2. mapping ontologies

>
> The first means that you decide *once* how SNOMED corresponds to
> a given RDB schema -- and if that correspondence changes, you have
> to somehow discard all the triples that resulted from the original
> conversion and then re-convert the RDB data.
>
> The second means that you decide how you think SNOMED corresponds
> to your putative ontology, and create a "mapping" ontology --
> which does little more than declare broaderClass, narrowerClass,
> equivalentClass, sameAs, and such.  If you realize later that one
> of your mappings is wrong, you change this ontology -- everything
> else remains as it is.
>
> Note that #2 does not mandate either forward- or backward-chaining.
> You *can* work from #2 and replicate & transform, if you find that
> works better for your deployment scenario.  You *can* use reasoning
> engines to work entirely dynamically, if that works better for you.
>
> Note that #1 *does* mandate forward-chaining.  You *cannot* use
> a reasoning engine to revise the putative-to-domain mapping once
> replication & transformation has been done.

I think I sort of agree with everything you said up to here.

> For this simple reason, I strongly advise that we *not* combine
> putative-to-domain ontology mapping into the rdb2rdf scenario --
> because it makes a decision which we haven't been chartered for,

Here is where I lost you. Can you please say explicitly what that  
decision is?

> and which I believe we are perilously close to deciding in the
> worst possible way.

What would be this worst possible option for the decision?

Thanks,
Richard



>
> Be seeing you,
>
> Ted
>
>
> --
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> attribution.html
> | Q: Are you sure?
> | | A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
> | | | Q: Why is top posting frowned upon?
>
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Received on Tuesday, 27 April 2010 20:50:12 UTC