IAU thesaurus in RDF (an update)

[Frederic V. Hessman]

> From: Tony Linde <Tony.Linde-at-leicester.ac.uk>
> Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 16:19:57 +0100
> << I appreciate your enthusiasm, but going beyond simple broader,  
> narrower, and related would demand a full-blown re-analysis of the  
> ontological entries. Frankly, updating content, getting the old  
> entries into rough correctness and legibility was already enough  
> work.>>
>
> I don't think anyone is suggesting that you do all the work  
> yourself, Rick. If we agree a format then a subgroup of this  
> workgroup should be formed to take the forward.
>
> The question is: whether the extended SKOS is too much work for  
> that subgroup or would substantially delay the creation of the  
> required SV. If not then it would seem worthwhile to develop a more  
> explicit specification than narrower/broader/related, so  
> broaderGeneric, broaderPartitive, broaderInstantive (will we be  
> recording instances in the SV?).
>
> T.
I think you're right about making this a more communal effort.   I  
really wasn't trying to do an end run-around (for those familiar with  
American football), but to generate interest in a practicable  
adoptable solution (well, ... mostly!).   Judging by the lack of any  
real complaints (at least in principle), I think and hope we're  
converging on this part of this problem.

The present thesaurus is still a bit of a moving target, although I  
think things are settling, so with a big push and lots of self- 
control (!), we could get it far enough to make it a real proposal.    
What I see remaining to do is first:

	Basic Idea:
		- acceptable or should we stop doing/talking about this?   A vote  
of hands?

then

	IAU/IVOA Thesaurus:
		- name					I vote for "Updated IAU Thesaurus" (lots of political  
brownie points and the blessings of continuity) or, if necessary,  
"IVOA Standard Vocabulary" (if we have to be purists)
		- ivorn et al.				need to register this and other vocabularies  
somewhere and determine final resting place at ivoa.net
		- rules					e.g. singular/plural format?   restrictions on amount  
of ontological info (e.g. limit on # of NT's, BT's, RT's in present  
document)?  See the rules we suggested for the SV.
		- normative format.		I vote for text at first unless something  
simple like N3 is good enough (i.e. just as simple but with tools/ 
parsers/filters already crafted)
		- supported formats.		Based on previous discussion, sounds like  
SKOS and OWL.   Would like to see concrete translation patterns  
between text/N3 and SKOS/OWL.
		- documentation			HTML-based help at least at the level of my  
simple lists/dictionary.  One can quickly get bogged down in the  
ocean of tokens.....  This is not about high-level computer post- 
processing but human-level decisions about what tokens are needed/ 
missing.
		- examples				How to use both the tokens and the limited  
ontological info, both as proof-of-concept (read "post-facto  
justification") and to show potential to external parties
		- adoption				Formulation as a formal proposal, desirable timeline.

and then immediately thereafter (or in parallel):

	IVOA Generic Vocabularies:
		- name					N/A
		- ivorn et al.				vocabularies should be VO resources (but should  
be able to live outside as well - not everything happens as a  
registered VO activity)
		- rules					N/A - every vocabulary can have it's own rules for  
forming tokens (within the syntactical limits of parsers) and chooses  
it's own level of ontological info.
		- normative format		same final choice becomes IVOA standard until a  
new and better one appears
		- supported formats		N/A, WG provides handy conversion tools if  
necessary
		- documentation			N/A
		- examples				Semantic WG provides UCD, A&A, AOIM, HOU, .....
		- adoption				N/A - let a thousand vocabularies bloom!

Could you and/or Andreas get a (T)Wiki set up?  All that I have is on  
my homepage (download IAU.tar).  I'm sure Alaisdair Allan could put  
up a functional if temporary working site at HTN if the IVOA  
administrative path is difficult.

Rick

P.S.  I will be away for the next 10 days (knee surgery) and may or  
may not find the time at home to work on this, so the ball is in  
ya'll's court.

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
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Dr. Frederic V. Hessman     Hessman at Astro.physik.Uni-Goettingen.DE
Institut für Astrophysik          Tel.  +49-551-39-5052
Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1         Fax +49-551-39-5043
37077 Goettingen                 Room F04-133
http://www.Astro.physik.Uni-Goettingen.de/~hessman
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