RE: A question on the vocabulary for 'persons' - ACL level of granularity?

> [Xiaoshu Wang]
> 
> I wish it could be that simple when you handle the task to machine.  Show me
> how you can only import the foaf:Person without fetching the foaf:geekcodes
> as well? From other perspective, can you do something like, I only use this
> part of GO but not the other part? Even if you are allowed to do so, what do
> we mean sharing an ontology. If someone agress only ome portion, but others
> agrees to other portion, of the ontology?

You're right that there's no way to "dis-import" (i.e., refuse to
import) parts of an ontology you disagree with.  But we have to be
careful to distinguish the parts you disagree with from the parts you
simply don't use.  In the case of "geekcodes," I'm guessing that you
don't have any opinions about them one way or the other; you just
think they're not relevant.  In that case, it's harmless to import the
ontology.  In practice, this happens a lot.

Another remark, which may be too obvious to be worth making, but here
goes: You can use a namespace, and thus the symbols from an ontology,
without importing it.  In some cases, one does this just to declare
that you want to use that symbol to avoid making up one of your own;
and you don't need the axioms that formally constrain the symbol's
meaning.  In other cases, there may be only a few such axioms, and you
can simply copy them.  I don't know if this is a good idea.  We're
getting into a whole mess of hard questions about version control,
partial importing of ontologies, etc. etc. that I wish I had answers
to.  

-- 
   Drew McDermott
   Yale Computer Science Department

Received on Saturday, 16 September 2006 17:19:07 UTC