RE: using OBO in owl format to describe data

--Mary,

I am not familiar with OBO, but what you are suggesting is actually what
should be avoided in RDF.  RDF is based on open world assumption.  But to
have one superclass for the purpose of enforcing certain annotation property
is a closed world thinking in Object Oriented world.

In your case, I wonder if there is any concrete criteria that makes one
resource an obo:Term but the other not?  If not, why invent another term for
it? And doing so will at least make the statement very odd to understand.
For instance, assume there is an instance of gene class Y named x. Then, we
can say,

@prefix gene: <http://example.com/genes#> .
gene:Y rdfs:subClassOf obo:Term .

Then it is natural to say,

_:x a gene:Y . 

but it would be very odd to say, 

_:x a obo:Term .

In addition, it will incur unnecessary computation complexity for RDF
engine. 

This kind of pseudo-Superclass pattern is also used. Everything in MGED is
an MGED:Ontology and everything in BIO-PAX is a bio-pax:entity. But the main
purpose of this super-class is to enforce certain AnnotationProperty or
grouping terms. No offense to those groups, but I think the design is wrong
and should be avoided.   

To design a superclass is different form designing certain properties, like
obo:name, obo:id etc., because it is still natural to say that something is
a gene but has certain name and id etc., like the following,

_:x a gene:Y ;
   obo:name "Some gene" ;
   obo:id   "12345" .

And best of all, you shouldn't invent those properties, because each
resource should have a URI and rdfs:label can be used for name. And there
are other ontology like Dublin Core at your dispense as well.

You probably wondered then, how can interoperability to be ensured if there
is no way to constrain it. My take to this is to think it in long term.
Overtime, a few commonly used ontology would be shared by people who have
the same interest.  Take economy as an analogy, controled market have short
term stability but destine to collapse big time some time.  But free market
economy have occassional turmoil, especially at the beginning but is more
robust and stable in the long run.  So, don't worry about how others will do
in the future.  Just think about if there is any ontologies that can help
you adequately describe your data.  

Xiaoshu 


> -----Original Message-----
> From: semantic-web-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:semantic-web-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Mary Montoya
> Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 1:09 AM
> To: semantic-web@w3.org; public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org
> Subject: using OBO in owl format to describe data
> 
> 
> I have a question about using the OpenBiomedicalOntologies 
> such as the SequenceOntology in owl format to describe data 
> resident in my local biological database. 
> 
> It seems desirable to leverage subclass relationships of 
> terms in the hierarchy of the SequenceOntology and to have 
> all the terms there rooted in a common parent obo:Term class. 
>  OBO defines certain information to be provided for all OBO 
> terms such as name, id, definition, etc.  These provide 
> descriptive information of the class itself not properties of 
> members of the class.  So it seems all obo:Terms would have 
> "class values" for a name, id, def, etc.  I would then expect 
> to find classes in SequenceOntology  that are defined as 
> subClassOf obo:Term and reflect the hierachical structure of 
> those SequenceOntology terms, for example, so:Gene as a 
> subClassOf so:Region which is a subClassOf 
> so:Located_sequence_feature which is a subClassOf obo:Term.  
> The problem  is that the owl class definitions I've seen for 
> OBO terms don't also include property definitions for 
> individuals of the class.  So an individual of so:Gene 
> doesn't have a property for name, id, def, etc that I can 
> provide values for from my database.  There are only these 
> class description properties often defined using rdfs:label, 
> rdfs:comment or as annotation type properties. 
> My question is:  How can I use these publicly available 
> ontologies to hold values for my data? They seem poised for 
> interoperability if these properties were available to 
> individuals of these classes.
> 
> Here is one sequence ontology definition I found for gene in 
> owl format ( others I've seen look similar )
> 
>  <owl:Class rdf:ID="SO_0000704">
>        <rdfs:label xml:lang="en">gene</rdfs:label>
>        <rdfs:comment
> rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">A 
> locatable region of genomic sequence, corresponding to a unit 
> of inheritance, which is associated with regulatory regions, 
> transcribed regions and/or other functional sequence 
> regions</rdfs:comment>
>        <rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#SO_0000001"/> </owl:Class>
> 
> I thought something like this would be more useful:
> 
>    <owl:Class rdf:about="&so;SO_0000704">
>         <obo:classId>SO:0000704</obo:classId>
>         <obo:className>gene</obo:className>
>         <obo:classDef>
>             "A locatable region of genomic sequence, 
> corresponding to a unit of 
>             inheritance, which is associated with regulatory regions, 
>             transcribed regions and/or other functional 
> sequence regions" 
>             [SO:rd] 
>         </obo:classDef>
>         <rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&so;SO_0000001"/>
>     </owl:Class>
> 
> with the root parent Term defined within an obo namespace as 
>     <owl:Class rdf:about="&obo;Term">
>         <obo:classId>OBO:Term</obo:classId>
>         <obo:className>term</obo:className>
>         <obo:classDef>
>             Term is a blah, blah
>         </obo:classDef>
>         <rdfs:subClassOf>
>             <owl:Restriction>
>                 <owl:onProperty rdf:resource="&obo;name"/>
>                 <owl:minCardinality 
> rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">
>                     1
>                 </owl:minCardinality>
>                 <owl:maxCardinality 
> rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">
>                     1
>                 </owl:maxCardinality>
>             </owl:Restriction>
>         </rdfs:subClassOf>
>         <rdfs:subClassOf>
>             <owl:Restriction>
>                 <owl:onProperty rdf:resource="&obo;id"/>
>                 <owl:minCardinality 
> rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">
>                     1
>                 </owl:minCardinality>
>                 <owl:maxCardinality 
> rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">
>                     1
>                 </owl:maxCardinality>
>             </owl:Restriction>
>         </rdfs:subClassOf>
>         <rdfs:subClassOf>
>             <owl:Restriction>
>                 <owl:onProperty rdf:resource="&obo;def"/>
>                 <owl:minCardinality 
> rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">
>                     0
>                 </owl:minCardinality>
>                 <owl:maxCardinality 
> rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">
>                     1
>                 </owl:maxCardinality>
>             </owl:Restriction>
>         </rdfs:subClassOf>
>     </owl:Class>
> 
> Then I could do something like this:
> 
>     <owl:Class rdf:about="&mystuff;MyGene">
> 	<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&so;SO_0000704"/>
>         <rdfs:subClassOf>
>             <owl:Restriction>
>                 <owl:onProperty 
> rdf:resource="&mystuff;chromosomeNumber"/>
>                 <owl:minCardinality 
> rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">
>                     1
>                 </owl:minCardinality>
>                 <owl:maxCardinality 
> rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">
>                     1
>                 </owl:maxCardinality>
>             </owl:Restriction>
>         </rdfs:subClassOf>
>          <rdfs:subClassOf>
>             <owl:Restriction>
>                 <owl:onProperty 
> rdf:resource="&mystuff;startCoordinate"/>
>                 <owl:minCardinality 
> rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">
>                     1
>                 </owl:minCardinality>
>                 <owl:maxCardinality 
> rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">
>                     1
>                 </owl:maxCardinality>
>             </owl:Restriction>
>         </rdfs:subClassOf>
>          <rdfs:subClassOf>
>             <owl:Restriction>
>                 <owl:onProperty 
> rdf:resource="&mystuff;endCoordinate"/>
>                 <owl:minCardinality 
> rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">
>                     1
>                 </owl:minCardinality>
>                 <owl:maxCardinality 
> rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">
>                     1
>                 </owl:maxCardinality>
>             </owl:Restriction>
>         </rdfs:subClassOf>
>         <rdfs:subClassOf>
>             <owl:Restriction>
>                 <owl:onProperty rdf:resource="&mystuff;sequence"/>
>                 <owl:minCardinality 
> rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">
>                     1
>                 </owl:minCardinality>
>                 <owl:maxCardinality 
> rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">
>                     1
>                 </owl:maxCardinality>
>             </owl:Restriction>
>         </rdfs:subClassOf>
>     </owl:Class>
> 
> so now I have defined a class MyGene that extends from obo to 
> sequence ontology and I can define individuals with property 
> values for the following from my database:
> obo:name
> obo:id
> obo:def
> mystuff:sequence
> mystuff:endCoordinate
> mystuff:startCoordinate
> mystuff:chromosomeNumber
> 
> It seems presumptuous to define properties for individuals ( 
> name, id, etc ) as well as class properties ( className, 
> classID, etc ) for public ontologies such as obo ontologies 
> but possibly quite useful for interoperability sake.  Any 
> comments would be welcome.
> 
> Mary Montoya
> 
> VPIN project team
> NCGR
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>

Received on Wednesday, 11 October 2006 13:49:16 UTC