RE: Add Sweet Ontology to SDWBP 6.2 Expressing Spatial Data

Hi Lewis –

Since you have raised SWEET, it is perhaps worth noting a few ways in which it does not meet the expectations of the linked data community:


(i)                 Every concept (class or property) defined in SWEET is denoted with a http URI, but *these do not resolve* using HTTP. The main way to use SWEET is to download the files, which are available, but huge and take a long time to download;

(ii)               The same concept has a *different URI in different versions* of SWEET. In particular the URIs have the SWEET version number in them. The URIs also reflect the factoring between modules, which changes between versions. There is also no tracking back from later versions to older versions, so there is no way to automatically detect semantic equivalence between versions;

(iii)             There is almost *no documentation* – no rdfs:label, dc:description, rdfs:comment etc and also no rdfs:seeAlso, skos:closeMatch, rdfs:isDefinedBy etc. So all you have to go by is the name and position in the subsumption hierarchy.


This is a shame, because SWEET is a well thought-out, well-structured resource, but falls short in these few ways. I have raised these issues with Thomas Huang (JPL) who I think is the current maintainer, but haven’t had any impact yet ☹

Simon

From: lewis john mcgibbney [mailto:lewismc@apache.org]
Sent: Wednesday, 30 March 2016 6:32 PM
To: SDW WG Public List <public-sdw-wg@w3.org>
Subject: Add Sweet Ontology to SDWBP 6.2 Expressing Spatial Data

Hi Folks,
I would like to propose the addition of the spatially-relevant portions of the Semantic Web for Earth and Environmental Terminology (SWEET) [0] ontology which was authored @JPL.
SWEET was developed with the aim of better locating NASA Earth science data with it containing mutual relationships of scientific concepts and their ancillary space, time, and environmental descriptors. There are a number of spatial components which I would be happy to expand upon if required.
Thank you for any feedback.
Lewis

[0] http://sweet.jpl.nasa.gov