Re: New major release of the NeOn Toolkit (v2.3)

Hi Alexander,

Just a quick answer to two of your questions (I am sure somebody else  
will promptly answer the others and Marco's).

> Taking the risk of being annoying I'd also ask, how is NeON's
> Modularization approach different from previously proposed ones?

That certainly depends on which previously proposed approaches you are  
referring to, but the major difference in my opinion is that the tools  
for modularization in the NeOn toolkit don't focus on one specific  
modularization task (module extraction, partitioning, composition), or  
on one specific, pre-defined set of modularization criteria, but offer  
a variety of relatively simple "operators" to build custom made  
modularizations of ontologies.

Of course, this is just the quick answer. You can have a look at [1],  
[2] and of course the NeOn deliverable D1.1.4 [3] if you are  
interested in this particular aspect (and of course, I am always open  
to discussions on this topic).

> Also,
> regarding Watson, how is Watson an alternative to bioportal.

Oh, that's an easy one: it is not.

> From
> whAt  I have seen Watson does not offer everything bioportal does.

Of course, they are completely different systems. Bioportal is an  
ontology repository and Watson is an ontology search engine. Watson  
automatically crawls the Web to find ontologies to index, Bioportal  
relies on a community of users to submit ontologies (currently in the  
biomedical domain, but I understand that the technology is generic).

But maybe you are referring to Cupboard, which is an ontology  
repository based on the Watson engine (as well as on an alignment  
server, an ontology metadata registry and an ontology reviewing  
mechanism). Making a complete list of the differences between these  
two systems goes well beyond what can be done in a single e-mail. It  
is important to notice however that we are certainly not trying to  
enter a competition here. Each system has its own strengths, and I  
don't believe that thinking in terms of one being an alternative to  
the other is the right approach. As far as I am concerned,  
collaboration and interoperability between systems like Bioportal and  
Cupboard is one of the reasons for a workshop like ORES [4] and for a  
number of other initiatives to exist.

Best,
Mathieu.

[1] d'Aquin, M., Schlicht, A., Stuckenschmidt, H., Sabou, M., (2009)  
Criteria and Evaluation for Ontology Modularization Technique. In  
Heiner Stuckenschmidt, Christine Parent, Stefano Spaccapietra (ed)  
Modular Ontologies: Concepts, Theories and Techniques for Knowledge  
Modularization, Criteria and Evaluation for Ontology Modularization  
Technique.
[2] d'Aquin, M., Doran, P., Motta, E., Tamma, V., (2007)Towards a  
Parametric Ontology Modularization Framework Based on Graph  
Transformation. Workshop: International Workshop on Modular  
Ontologies, K-CAP 2007.
[3] http://www.neon-project.org/web-content/images/Publications/neon_2008_d114.pdf
[4] http://www.ontologydynamics.org/od/index.php/ores2010/




The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).

Received on Monday, 22 February 2010 19:12:54 UTC