Ontology-based querying

[Tony Linde]

I've posted a short page of musings (late night stuff so fairly
rambling) about how an ontological approach to querying might lead to
more intelligent assistance in formulating queries against new datasets.
Could some of the ontology experts here cast an eye over it and tell me
if it is drivel, wishful thinking or can already be done by naïve
computer science undergrads.

Basically, I've asked if it is possible to encode the metadata about
various selection criteria in such a way that the inference engine might
be told the desired metadata of a catalog (eg that it contains a list of
brown dwarfs) and could then deduce the correct selection criteria and
datasets to apply them to.

I'm looking to find a practical use (or future use) of the ontological
approach that will engage astronomers.


Cheers,
Tony.
__
Tony Linde                       Phone:  +44 (0)116 223 1292
AstroGrid Project Manager        Fax:    +44 (0)116 252 3311
Dept of Physics & Astronomy      Mobile: +44 (0)7753 603356
University of Leicester          Email:  tol at star.le.ac.uk
Leicester, UK   LE1 7RH          Web:    http://www.astrogrid.org