RE: Ontology editor + why RDF?

Anita,

 

There are two alternatives for representing ontologies RDF Schema and OWL.

If you plan to use an OWL reasoner then, an OWL based ontology editor should be
the right choice.

This can help you:

-          track inconsistencies such as concepts are contradictions

-          cycles 

-          equivalent concepts

-          re-organizing polyhierarchies...

 

There will be upfront cost however of converting your thesauri into OWL.

 

Using RDF Schema will be cheaper initially as the mapping of thesauri into RDF
Schema can be automated to a large

extent.

 

As far an industrial strength ontology editor and OWL-reasoner such as Construct
and Cerebra from Cerebra could be 

a good choice. 

 

Cheers,

 

---Vipul

 

=======================================

Vipul Kashyap, Ph.D.

Senior Medical Informatician

Clinical Informatics R&D, Partners HealthCare System

Phone: (781)416-9254

Cell: (617)943-7120

http://www.partners.org/cird/AboutUs.asp?cBox=Staff&stAb=vik

 

To keep up you need the right answers; to get ahead you need the right questions

---John Browning and Spencer Reiss, Wired 6.04.95

________________________________

From: public-semweb-lifesci-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-semweb-lifesci-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of deWaard, Anita (ELS)
Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2006 6:37 AM
To: public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org
Subject: Ontology editor + why RDF?

 

Dear all, 

 

A quick question that I was hoping this forum might have some thoughts on: we
are looking for a new editing tool for our life science thesaurus EMTREE
(proprietary, multi-facted polyhierarchical, 260 k terms (50 k preferred, 210 k+
synonyms), > 10,000 nodes) and I am trying to convince the thesaurus department
to go to an RDF-based editor. I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on 

a- the best professional-grade ontology editor to use (serious alternatives to
Protege?), and

b- the best arguments to convince my company to start using RDF, both internally
and externally. 

 

Thanks for any comments! 

Anita

Anita de Waard

Advanced Technology Group, Elsevier

Radarweg 29, 1043 NX Amsterdam

+31 20 485 3838

a.dewaard@elsevier.com <mailto:a.dewaard@elsevier.com>