IVOA Vocabularies - WD

[Kjetil Kjernsmo]

On Thursday 06 September 2007, Tony Linde wrote:
> If there is a good reason for not using the common standard, it would
> be a good idea to make that clear in the document.

Indeed, and it should be clear that there are very large costs 
associated with making a vocabulary like this if interoperability 
should ever become an issue. Instead of using a toolset developed by a 
large community, you would have to engineer and develop all tools for 
this yourself. 

I would certainly not use straight XML for this purpose, XML is just a 
data structure. OWL or SKOS is the technology that is being adopted all 
over for this kind of problem. To some extent, Topic Maps (pretty much 
a dying technology) and ISO 15926 are relevant too. 

SKOS is not yet finished, therefore it has a window of opportunity now 
to comment on the standard if there are issues that should be 
addressed. I am willing to relay comments to the Semantic Web 
Deployment Working Group, which is entity responsible for the 
specification. However, I'll be away for the next 7 weeks.

Best,

Kjetil
-- 
Kjetil Kjernsmo
Programmer / Astrophysicist / Ski-orienteer / Orienteer / Mountaineer
kjetil at kjernsmo.net
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