utype questions

[Doug Tody]

Hi Frederic -

Maybe I am not understanding your question, but semantic inference is
a completely different issue from UTYPE.  We are dealing with data
models here, not vocabularies.  We do not want to have to infer the
field of a data model.  We just need simple static labels, defined
within the context of a single (versioned!) model, to allow model
attributes to be manipulated in a representation-independent fashion.

Now if our data model contains an attribute (UTYPE) such as Target.Class
to specify the class of astronomical object observed, we do need
semantic inference to do useful things with the value of this attribute.
The UTYPE "Target.Class" is completely defined by the data model,
but the contents are an open-ended vocabulary with the problem of
multiple dialects and so on.

 	- Doug


On Mon, 29 Jun 2009, Frederic Hessman wrote:

> Sorry to dig back into the utype question, but why isn't the use of multiple, 
> translatable vocabularies a la SKOS the ideal (indeed only) solution?  Don't 
> want user readability, don't want to enforce a single usage, don't need an 
> ontology, don't want to restrict mixing and matching as long as I can match 
> what's been mixed, just need a good label.   Or am I being naive and/or 
> single-minded?
>
> Rick
>