What use the AstroOntology

[Tony Linde]

> What use is has-emission in? If you are looking for those 
> QSOs within a 
> specific range, as in has-emission-in X-ray of 10^35 < Lx < 10^36 erg?

That really is the point I was getting at. AFAIK an ontology cannot store
the fact that '10^35 < Lx < 10^36 erg', but only the very broad
'has-emission-in X-ray'. Is it still useful? 

An application, however, might use the AstroOntology (which, I agree, is
relatively static) allied to a ruleset relating to high emission X-ray
objects to deliver useful information to the astronomer.

What I was really after, though, was use cases for employing the
AstroOntology, from which I hoped we could derive the necessary relations
(beyond the obvious ones such as 'is-a-type-of' and 'is-a-component-of').

T.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ed Shaya [mailto:eshaya at umd.edu] 
> Sent: 06 March 2007 17:01
> To: Tony Linde
> Subject: Re: What use the AstroOntology
> 
> 
> 
> Tony Linde wrote:
> > So if we use the working hypothesis that the AstroOntology 
> is fixed and is a
> > complete description of terms used by astronomers and the 
> relations between
> > those terms, then what relations do we need for which use cases?
> > 
> > The use case specified in Andreas et al's draft, has the 
> AstroOntology used
> > to assist users in looking for resources in the registry. 
> These resources
> > have both fixed keywords and free text used to describe 
> them. The assistance
> > consists of widening and narrowing the terms used in the 
> registry search. I
> > would guess that the most important relations in this case are
> > 'is-a-type-of' and 'is-synonymous-with' and perhaps 
> 'is-a-component-of'. The
> > synonyms are used to include all the variants of the term 
> sought by the user
> > in the search. The types (and perhaps components) are used 
> to allow the user
> > to choose to include wider or narrower types of the term in 
> the search.
> > Prior to any use of the AstroOntology (or after any 
> updates), the reasoner
> > can be run to ensure that all the permutations are forced 
> out: so if A
> > is-a-type-of B is-a-type-of C then A is-a-type-of C is 
> added; and if B'
> > is-synonymous-with B then A is-a-type-of B' and B' 
> is-a-type-of C is added.
> > 
> > The first question I would ask is, what use cases do we 
> want to satisfy with
> > the other relations: has-morphology, has-emission-in etc?
> > 
> > My second question relates more to some confusion of the 
> AstroOntology
> > overall. We have a list of astronomical objects (BTW 
> wouldn't it be better
> > to name the top object AstroObject rather than AstrObject?) 
> and putative
> > relations between them. BUT we are using this (in the draft 
> use case) to
> > search a registry of resources, not of objects. The 
> metadata describes the
> > resource and while such metadata may include the type of 
> object picked out
> > in a catalogue (eg a catalogue of QSOs or of AGNs) and the 
> AstroOntology
> > would allow the narrowing or widening of the search on this 
> basis, the fact
> > that the observations were in the X-ray rather than IR is a 
> fact about the
> > resource not the objects.
> > 
> > I'm not sure I'm being clear here. Basically, what use is the
> > 'has-emission-in' relation? Are we hoping that if the user 
> asks some app to
> > look for QSOs for her, the app can not only suggest looking 
> for AGNs (if QSO
> > is-a-type-of AGN) but can also suggest looking at other 
> resources which have
> > X-ray observations (if QSO has-emission-in the X-ray 
> spectrum range)? 
> 
> What use is has-emission in? If you are looking for those 
> QSOs within a 
> specific range, as in has-emission-in X-ray of 10^35 < Lx < 10^36 erg?
> 
> >If so,
> > is this useful to the astronomer or is the identification 
> of the QSO so
> > context driven that no-one would ever just look in other 
> X-ray observations
> > for QSOs? (apologies for the astro-drivel!)
> 
> We want to reach the point that no-ONE would ever have to LOOK.  The 
> machines someday will deliver exactly what you are interested 
> in.  They 
> will correlate with the other thing that you are interested 
> in, and they 
> will tell you the two-point spatial correlation between the 
> two things.
> > T.
> > 
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: owner-semantics at eso.org 
> >> [mailto:owner-semantics at eso.org] On Behalf Of Anita M. S. Richards
> >> Sent: 06 March 2007 07:19
> >> To: Ashish Mahabal
> >> Cc: semantics at ivoa.net
> >> Subject: Re: What use the AstroOntology
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mon, 5 Mar 2007, Ashish Mahabal wrote:
> >>
> > 
> > http://www.Taglocity.com Tags: IVOA, semantics
> > 
> 

http://www.Taglocity.com Tags: IVOA, semantics