Vocabulary: Ontology

[Frederic V. Hessman]

On 12 Sep 2007, at 11:19 am, Bernard Vatant wrote:

>> Ya'll are welcome to produce oodles of fancy tools and  
>> breathtaking demos based on the power of current semantic software  
>> tools if you'll just let me _officially_ name a spiral galaxy a  
>> "spiral galaxy" and a Delta Scuti star a "Delta Scuti  
>> star" (please substitute your own favorite form for the tokens -  
>> who cares, really)( I'm rather fond of the token  
>> "PeanutButterAndJelly" and would like to see what your favorite  
>> semantic tool does with this token when applied to a spiral galaxy).
> Well, try this
>
> PREFIX  rdfs:  <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
> PREFIX  skos:  <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>
>
> SELECT    ?x
> WHERE {   ?x  skos:subject  ?c.
>                   ?c  rdfs:label "Spiral galaxies" @en.}
>
> Granted, if you put "Spiral galaxy" instead of "Spiral galaxies" so  
> far you don't retrieve anything.

This last effect is _exactly_ the first half of my only point:  I  
don't want to have to guess.

>> Or do we want to wait long enough for the dbpedia crew to decide  
>> which tokens we are effectively allowed to use and create a  
>> professional vocabulary for us?  In fact, maybe we should pool the  
>> current dbpedia list of resource labels and simply adopt them as  
>> good working starts and then kindly ask the dbpedia crew to use  
>> the rest of the tokens if possible......
> You don't need to wait for anything of the like to happen. You can  
> create your own professional vocabulary, publish it in RDF, and  
> either let other declare equivalence, or be proactive and declare  
> equivalence from your side if you think it's useful. Suppose you  
> have declared your own concept "SpiralGalaxy" and declare an  
> instance "Messier31" in your own namespace, the following  
> declarations on either or both DBpedia / IVOA side will glue the  
> data :
>
> ivoa:SpiralGalaxy      owl:sameAs       
> dbpedia:Category:Spiral_galaxies
> ivoa:Messier31         owl:sameAs      dbpedia:Whirlpool_Galaxy
>
> And if you want to make sure your resource is found under a variety  
> of names, use skos:prefLabel and skos:altLabel to name your concept  
> in a variety of labels and languages, such as
>
> ivoa:SpiralGalaxy    skos:prefLabel      "Spiral galaxy" @en
> ivoa:SpiralGalaxy    skos:altLabel      "Spiral galaxies" @en
> ivoa:SpiralGalaxy    skos:altLabel      "Spiral" @en
> ivoa:SpiralGalaxy    skos:prefLabel      "Galaxie spirale" @fr
> ivoa:SpiralGalaxy    skos:altLabel      "Galaxies spirales" @fr
> ivoa:SpiralGalaxy    skos:altLabel      "Spirale" @fr
> etc ...
>
> and even if you feel like it (not sure this gets consensus).
> ivoa:SpiralGalaxy    skos:altLabel      "PeanutButterAndJelly"  :-)

This is _exactly_ the other half of my point: we don't want to insist  
that every VO user/programmer be forced to "create your own  
professional vocabulary, publish it in RDF, and either let others  
declare equivalence, or be proactive and declare equivalence from  
your side if you think it's useful".   This is - at least initially -  
the job of the IVOA.  If someone wants to append/change/modify/ 
drastically extend the standard vocabulary thereafter, then... by all  
means.  Let a thousand ontological flowers bloom.

Given the beauty of these examples and the trivial means of  
exchanging formats within our VOcabulary proposal, can't we _by the  
meeting this month_ (InterOp)

	- replace all the XML/Schema in the "Note" aka "Working Draft",  
substituting trivially a simple SKOS/RDF equivalent (see my toy  
example at http://www.astro.physik.uni-goettingen.de/~hessman/rdf  
which I'm sure you can all quickly improve upon) and publish it as a  
true proposal with working examples like UCD, AOIM, A&A,... (easy -  
can be done in a day;

	- suggest that the IVOA accept this simple, nearly totally globally- 
standardized SKOS/RDF format/subset/extension as the recommended  
format for all VO vocabularies like UCD, AOIM, ..... (after all, SKOS/ 
RDF is already defined, there shouldn't be much to discuss if we can  
agree we're publishing a list of tokens with a minimal amount of RDF  
baggage);

	- provide a draft Standard Vocabulary in SKOS/RDF (easy - can be  
done in a day on the basis of our draft list) which VO applications  
_could_ use as their fundamental basis RIGHT NOW and, when accepted,  
_should_ use.  We can bicker about the details later.

Please, all of you say "yes and you'll receive a modificed "Note"  
with working examples in the mail tomorrow.

Rick

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
------------------------
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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