IVOA Vocabularies - WD

[Doug Tody]

Since there are multiple such standards, they can be complex, and they
keep evolving, it may make more sense to store the primary copy of the
information in a simple fixed format which we control (such as what has
been proposed), and perform an automated translation/ingest to use the
vocabulary with tools based upon one of these other advanced technologies.

One should also keep in mind that we might want to read this information
into astronomy client applications which just want the basic vocabulary,
do not need advanced inference capabilities, etc., and do not want to
be dependent upon some complex semantic web technology.

It should be possible to have it both ways...

	- Doug


On Thu, 6 Sep 2007, Kjetil Kjernsmo wrote:

> 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
> Homepage: http://www.kjetil.kjernsmo.net/     OpenPGP KeyID: 6A6A0BBC
>