comparing vocabularies -- examples

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