- From: Al Gilman <Alfred.S.Gilman@IEEE.org>
- Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 18:19:43 -0400
- To: wai-xtech@w3.org
It is a recurring situation where multiple groups have created controlled vocabularies in the same general application area before people are convinced of the need for interoperation between different kinds of tasks that touch the same domain of information. One way to achieve interoperation is through a process of schema normalization. But this requires the different communities to care enough about interoperation to change from their vocabulary to a compromise, joint-use vocabulary. Another way to achieve interoperation between data recorded in different vocabularies is to create a cross-reference index or model comparing and contrasting different ways of saying more or less the same thing. Here are two academic papers that address this problem, one in RDF and one in another notation. Here is the RDF-based paper: http://dbpubs.stanford.edu/pub/1999-25 Here is a paper that used Flora, a constraint programming system: http://www.sdsc.edu/~ludaesch/Paper/icde01.html The lexicon and thesaurus information system that Eric said the Semantic Web is using as a pattern of practice in this application domain is SKOS: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/thes/1.0/guide/ These are three worked examples of practice, with the first two of somewhat more historical and educational interest, because the standing suggestion is to base on SKOS for documenting formal-term usage as well as natural language vernacular. But we may need to look at technical-term applications of SKOS to have something that we can look at as a worked example similar to what we would be interested in doing. Al
Received on Tuesday, 17 August 2004 22:20:18 UTC