utype questions

[Frederic Hessman]

Roy et al

>
> 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
>>
> Rick et al
>
> Interesting thread you have started! So here is my 2 cents:
>
> -- Utypes is a system for precise, formal descriptions of data  
> structures so computers can find them.

No, a utype is a label for a member of a data structure, which sounds  
like data-structure vocabulary to me.  Isn't Norman's original comment  
that what utypes mean appears to depend upon who you ask?  That sounds  
like utypes are closed systems unless we find a standardized means of  
translating them into other forms of knowledge.  The whole point of  
the vocabulary effort was to define a common platform for  
systematising and translating such labels.

>
> -- Vocabulary is a classification system that is often probabilistic  
> in usage (or should be).

Yes and no.   A vocabulary can be (mis-)used as a primitive ontology  
(taxonomy) but also just as a set of labels.

>
> So it is oil and water, no? Then the question is less about  
> eliminating the boundary between these ways of thinking, but rather  
> what happens at the boundary. Perhaps we can ask the question of how  
> to link in each direction.

More like oil and vinegar: apparently very different, but when  
combined produces the desired effect.

>
> The Utypes people might like to say that their quantity derives from  
> theoretical models of radio-quite AGN. They want to link to:
> http://eurovotech.org/objects-structure#RadioQuietAGN
>
> The Vocabulary people might like to say that their idea of spectral  
> resolution is based on the IVOA spectral model, specifically they  
> want to link to Spectral.Resolution.RefVal
>
> How can the two sides cite each other so that we can refer to  
> technical and semantic concepts from each side to the other? How I  
> can use these special words for my own purposes: if I can choose to  
> go with Utype *or* Vocabulary, which provides more services? How can  
> I get a definition?

My point is that if we were able to join the way we currently use  
UCD's, utype's, ontologies, and descriptive labels, then these things  
wouldn't be so separate in practical terms:  I get a VOTable with a  
UCD, a java-object that processes utypes based on a data model, and  
want to process information based on an ontology, and the common  
platform for being able to compare, mix, translate, and match is a set  
of standard labels, i.e. a vocabulary (in the general sense we've been  
using it).  If the UCDs and utypes are expressible in SKOS (not  
fundamentally, but in the sense of being translatable into SKOS), the  
URI of the ontology also (http://eurovotech.org/objects-structure#RadioQuietAGN 
  <-->  voe:quietRadioAGN) then I can actually combine/compare things  
using one simple semantic processing model (comparison of multiple  
translatable vocabularies).

But again, maybe I'm just being naive....

Rick

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.ivoa.net/pipermail/semantics/attachments/20090630/943119cd/attachment-0001.html>