User requirements (was: Threads)

[Norman Gray]

Andrea, hello.

On 2007 Sep 28, at 08:20, Andrea Preite Martinez wrote:

> My modest opinion is that the discussion of vocabularies AND  
> ontologies, of SKOS or OWL could be very important if related to  
> the right requirements. If I remember correctly you were asking for  
> new requirements few posts ago. I still haven't seen that.

I've added a few explicit requirements, and non-requirements, to the  
<http://www.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/StdVocabScope> page.  These  
are intended to be just proposals -- edit, extend, delete at will!

It's probably no coincidence that the solution I favour -- of  
preening (or normalising or standardising) existing deployed  
vocabularies, and avoiding creating new terms except where there are  
obvious lacunae -- seems to match well the requrements I perceive.   
We can retain the value of a large vocabulary by adding the  
specifications which allow us to link vocabularies where appropriate.

That might include SKOS-ifying the IAU Thesaurus, or even producing a  
comprehensive update.

> On the other hand, I think that the discussion of vocabularies AND  
> ontologies, of SKOS or OWL, is perfectly irrelevant to the present  
> user requirements.

I agree -- the issue of how the terms are presented is a separate  
technical issue, which I can respond to more logically in a separate  
message.

> And the draft is a (perfectible) response to those.

I agree with that as well, in that the extensive work described there  
and in Rick's XML files, is extremely valuable in identifying generic  
and specific problems with current vocabularies, and identifying  
equivalences and alternate labels for the included terms.

Best wishes,

Norman


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Norman Gray  :  http://nxg.me.uk
eurovotech.org  :  University of Leicester, UK