Re: Versioning system for ontologies

What you say is certainly of interest. But I would call that change
tracking and provenance maintenance rather than version control. As I said,
whatever solution you take, don't forget about publishing your ontology
according to the spec. There is a tendency, when using such systems, to
forget about the basics and therefore reduce the network effects that
accrue from using what we have sweated to specify, in favor of using
ad-hoc, albeit proximally useful, systems.

-Alan



On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 1:05 PM, Ali SH <asaegyn+out@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Alan,
>
> What you suggest certainly provides a way of handling versioning, but in
> many environments, the additional repository features seem to be
> requirements. You almost always want to know who made a change, what the
> change was, alongside other provenance information - and of course, make
> this information machine readable (as opposed to a text note) seems
> desirable for this community :P.
>
> As I'm sure you're aware, when considering the quality and evaluation of
> ontologies, identifying the state of an ontology throughout its lifecycle
> also becomes quite important. Rafael S. Goncalves, Maria Copeland and their
> colleagues provide an interesting set of analyses on how ontologies differ
> through multiple versions [1] [2] [3].
>
> Of tangential (but closely related) interest to versioning, people might
> want to take a look at this year's Ontology Summit 2013 which focuses on
> "Ontology Evaluation Across the Ontology Lifecycle" [4]. Of particular
> interest may be the talk on the lifecycle stages (and from that one can
> extrapolate requirements for versioning that would faciliatae higher
> quality ontologies) - particularly Hanz Polzer and Mary Balboni's
> contributions [5].
>
> PS - Thanks for the response, will follow up offlist :D!
> [1]
> http://owl.cs.manchester.ac.uk/research/topics/ncit/regression-%20analysis/
> [2] http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-745/paper_40.pdf
> [3]
> http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/OntologySummit2013/2013-03-07_OntologySummit2013_OntologyEvaluation-IntrinsicAspects-2/OntologySummit2013_ontology-regression-testing--MariaCopeland_20130307.pdf
> [4] http://ontolog.cim3.net/OntologySummit/2013/
> [5] http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2013_01_24
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 12:49 PM, Alan Ruttenberg <
> alanruttenberg@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Don't forget about OWL's versionIRI, which gives a way to express that
>> different versions are of a single ontology. The most basic version control
>> is to periodically save a file, put it at a location, and make the
>> versionIRI point to it. Keep the ontologyIRI the same thoughtout. Use
>> import with the version you care load. At the ontologyIRI put either the
>> most recent version or the most recent version you release.
>>
>> There is no need for additional repository infrastructure, though that
>> may add useful features. Whatever you do, make sure that at a minimum you
>> version using vanilla specifications, given that they can support that.
>>
>> I generally recommend you do not change IRIs of terms as you change
>> versions. Rather,  try to ensure that the referents of your URIs refer to
>> the same intended entities, and obsolete them if they no longer refer well.
>>
>> Happy to discuss this offlist if you are interested in my experiences.
>>
>> Best,
>> Alan
>>
>> On Friday, April 19, 2013, Ali SH wrote:
>>
>>> I'm also very interested in hearing answers to this.
>>>
>>> As Stephen mentions, treating an ontology analogously to source code
>>> (which is close enough) means that you can use services such as github (or
>>> google code). The downside is that an ontology lifecycle management is *
>>> not* equivalent to source code management. Barring a native solution
>>> for ontologies, they do come quite close.
>>>
>>> You might also be interested in following the development of the Open
>>> Ontology Repository [1]
>>> (a fork of the BioPortal platform), which among other things will be
>>> addressing this issue as well.
>>>
>>> [1] http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OpenOntologyRepository
>>>
>>> On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Stephen D. Williams <sdw@lig.net>wrote:
>>>
>>>>  Do you want to version it like source code?  Everyone has, is, or
>>>> will move to Git for that.
>>>> Or maintain the history of changes for reasoning and/or historical
>>>> queries?  This is probably more needed for actual statements, but could
>>>> make sense here too: "Answer this query based on the ontology at time X."
>>>>
>>>> Stephen
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 4/19/13 7:05 AM, Prateek wrote:
>>>>
>>>>  Hello all,
>>>>
>>>>  I am trying to identify a system which will provide versioning and
>>>> revision control capabilities specifically for ontologies. Does anyone have
>>>> any experience and idea about which systems can help out or if systems like
>>>> SVN, CVS can do the job?
>>>>
>>>>  Regards
>>>>
>>>>  Prateek
>>>>
>>>>  --
>>>>
>>>> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>>>> Prateek Jain, Ph. D.
>>>> RSM
>>>> IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
>>>> 1101 Kitchawan Road, 37-244
>>>> Yorktown Heights, NY 10598
>>>> Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/prateekj
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Stephen D. Williams sdw@lig.net stephendwilliams@gmail.com LinkedIn: http://sdw.st/in
>>>> V:650-450-UNIX (8649) V:866.SDW.UNIX V:703.371.9362 F:703.995.0407AIM:sdw Skype:StephenDWilliams Yahoo:sdwlignet Resume: http://sdw.st/gres
>>>> Personal: http://sdw.st facebook.com/sdwlig twitter.com/scienteer
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>>
>>> (•`'·.¸(`'·.¸(•)¸.·'´)¸.·'´•) .,.,
>>>
>>
>
>
> --
>
>
> (•`'·.¸(`'·.¸(•)¸.·'´)¸.·'´•) .,.,
>