[Ontology] UCDs vs ontologies?

[Ed Shaya]

Are these discussions going to be on dm or semantics?  We had better 
decide fast.  I had spoken with Jonathan just a few days ago and he felt 
this logically belonged inside of dm.  I agreed with him because 
Ontology should be a basic component (an early stage) of data modeling.  
But then Tony Linde reminded me that there already is a semantics site 
and that is where it belongs.  That makes sense too.  What do others think?

Ed



Sebastien Derriere wrote:

>[posted to dm only to avoid cross-posting]
>
>Elizabeth Auden wrote:
>  
>
>>Incidentally, I've posted a first go at a VOEvent ontology (OWL-DL format)
>>on the VOTech wiki at
>>http://wiki.eurovotech.org/bin/view/VOTech/VoEventOntology. Any comments
>>on the structure, concepts, and coverage of this v0.000000001 ontology
>>would be appreciated.
>>    
>>
>
>  Hi,
>
>  Reading the questions you list in the above page, I have a comment
>on points 2 and 3.
>  When trying to build small ontologies, I found (and still do find)
>extremely stupid to be "forced" to define one slot dedicated to each
>class
>to indicate "hasSomething".
>  In your example, Contact / hasContact , How / hasHow, What / hasWhat,
>....
>I found this (and this is the case in every example I could find) awful.
>
>  I wish we could define something where we don't have to be omniscients
>when building the ontology, but where the ability to make reasonning
>would
>not be lost. Something like:
>  - Having a class named Property
>  - Having classes Contact, How, What, ... being subclasses of Property
>(these classes might have many superclasses)
>  - Having a unique slot "hasProperty" with a value being a Class, with
>the allowed class "Property" (thus also allowing Property's subclasses)
>
>  That way, instead of having to define zillions of slots (i.e. at least
>one
>per new subclass of Property) and writing:
>
>MyConcept hasContact Contact
>MyConcept hasHow How
>MyConcept hasWhat What
>.... and as many as there are different possible properties
>
>we could simply write things like:
>
>MyConcept hasProperty Property  (with multiple cardinality, this
>would cover all the above: no need to predefine all possible cases)
>
>  and if we need to be more precise (restrict allowed properties):
>
>MyConcept hasProperty (Class with superclass Contact or How or What)
>
>  Anyone experienced could tell if my own view is really really
>wrong? Or incompatible with the way description logics and reasonners
>work? I hope this could make our lives easier when we stop playing
>with toy-ontologies and go into the big ones.
>
>Sebastien.
>  
>