- From: Donald Doherty <donald.doherty@brainstage.com>
- Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 20:31:57 -0400
- To: "'Eric Neumann'" <eneumann@teranode.com>, "'Alan Ruttenberg'" <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>
- Cc: "'w3c semweb hcls'" <public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org>
Eric,
What you call "covering" below seems particularly important. In my view,
there can never be one true ontology, especially in science (unless we're
done and have reached complete knowledge...if that's possible). You present
an interesting solution...
Don
Donald Doherty, Ph.D.
Brainstage Research, Inc.
www.brainstage.com
donald.doherty@brainstage.com
412-478-4552
[snip]
In the absence of any formal ontology that could cover all life
sciences data records (e.g., Genes), a relational instance model might
be more practical and appealing; A transitive rule could be proposed
that states all data records referencing the same bio/chem-entity would
be viewed as "bio/chem entity" equivalent, regardless of what
ontology/rdfschema were used to define each of them:
(?data1 hcls:isDefinedAs ?ent) AND (?data2 hcls:isDefinedAs ?ent) ->
(?data1 hcls:sameEntityAs ?data2 )
This is an example of what I had suggested as a "Covering", since there
is no explicit need to use ontologies to map data records to common
class-based concepts. owl:sameAs could be used hear, but the
'sameEntityAs' relation could have more selective meaning for this
community in terms of data records and 'things'. I leave it open for
discussion...
I'd be interested to hear how important and practical the points raised
here are. The main objective I have is to try and get our common
discussion to focus on some basic, agreeable points that we can work
together on over the next (hopefully) few weeks.
cheers,
Eric
Eric Neumann, PhD
co-chair, W3C Healthcare and Life Sciences,
and Senior Director Product Strategy
Teranode Corporation
83 South King Street, Suite 800
Seattle, WA 98104
+1 (781)856-9132
www.teranode.com
Received on Monday, 31 July 2006 00:30:02 UTC