- From: Alan Rector <rector@cs.man.ac.uk>
- Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 11:36:20 +0100
- To: chris mungall <cjm@fruitfly.org>, public-semweb-lifesci <public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org>, Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>, Bijan Parsia <bparsia@cs.man.ac.uk>, Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>
Chris, Bijan, Pat, All Coming into this late, it seems to me that there are a series of use- cases / requirements / wishes that people are trying to accommodate made worse by real difficulties of the "use vs mention" variety. I think there is a need of a high level document setting out the issues separate, insofar as possible, from the nitty gritty of RDF or OWL. Pat or others can probably help get these clearer, but s a start... Most of this is expressed in a more OWL than RDF way because that's how I work. SYMBOLS, STATEMENTS & FACTS * Reference to the specific symbols (triples) in a specific ontology in a specific version in a specific document - required for provenance. I have lots of requirements for tracking the changes to reference documents at this level, where it is the symbols in the document of a particular document that are of concern. * Reference to the statement represented by those symbols on the authority represented. The same statement on might have been made elsewhere on the web with physically different symbols. Who made the statement, etc. The symbols may change, e.g. with versioning, but the statement persist. * Reference to the fact asserted in the statement - e.g. whether or not it is true, supported by sufficient evidence for a given purpose, believed by Chris, etc. SOME OTHER ISSUES... GRANULARITY OF REFERENCE * Is the class a sufficient level of granularity. In OWL I often need to refer to specific axioms and even to conjuncts within a definition. For example in Alan's query. > >> There is a subclass of gene expression processes, during each >> instance of which some instance of protein a is the participant >> which is "the thing produced", and which is located_in some >> instance of tissue b. Is it sufficient to refer to the entire construct? or do I need to refer to the provenance of the claim that the protein is then located in some issue of tissue b (rather than some tissue c)? (And is this a "definition" in the sense of a set of jointly sufficient and individually necessary conditions, or just a group of necessary conditions?) In modular OWL ontologies, the ability to annotate individual axioms is an absolute requirement to know where they came from and should be edited. I think I have cases for annotation and provenance where it is needed for individual conjuncts in necessary and sufficient conditions. * Annotation of removal/exclusion of axioms. That an axiom is absent is frequently as important as that it is present. When after a long controversy an assertion is removed, I want to record that information to help avoid somebody adding it back later. INFERENCE AND PROVENANCE * For OWL ontologies, we need a standard way to annotate whether a given "statement" in OWL has been asserted or inferred. (and whether an ontology is being provided in with all standard inferences already performed). If it has been inferred, then we need to know the overall scope of the inference - i.e. the set of all ontologies imported and accessible to the reasoner during the inference. In this case, whether or not an statement has been inferred or asserted (by someone at some time...) is just another form of provenance annotation. Regards Alan
Received on Sunday, 20 May 2007 01:56:31 UTC