use of vocabulary tokens

[Frederic V. Hessman]

We all know that VOEvent has shown brightly when it came to producing  
a workable solution to a VO problem (yes, there were some heafty  
discussions at first, but that was half the fun, since they ended  
rather quickly).

The Semantics WG is definitely the official place to hash out issues  
of formal semantics problems within the VO (which we are doing), but  
the VOEvent community has yet another opportunity to push things in  
the direction of usefulness and reality-conformality: assuming that  
something like the revised IAU thesaurus will be accepted (replacing  
our original suggestion of a purely XML-based VOcabulary format and  
Standard Vocabulary), providing VOEvent with at least one set of  
useful tokens for <Why>, it would be good for the semantic WG  
discussion to hear how other groups would like to be able to use  
these tokens (there were actually a few people who hadn't heard what  
the tokens might be useful for).

For example, if all VOEvent wants is to standardize the <Param>'s, e.g.

	<Param concept="IAU:gamma-ray_burst"/>

(e.g. alongside the ucd="" usage, at least for a while), then nothing  
needs to be done and we could have a solution very quickly.  If,  
however, more complex information is needed, then something like

	<Why>
		<rdf:Bag>
			<ext-skos:NOT>
				<rdf:li resource="IAU:dwarf_novae"/>
				<rdf:li resource="IAU:gamma-ray_bursts"/>
			</ext-skos:NOT>
			<rdf:li resource="IAU:optical_outbursts"/>
		</rdf:Bag>
	</Why>

becomes possible, making VOEvent explicitly semantic-web conform.   
Or, the RDF/SKOS gobbletygook is hidden in VOEvent-specific elements,  
implicitly, leaving

	<Why>
		<NOT>
			<Concept prob="1%">IAU:dwarf_novae</Concept>
			<Concept prob="2%">IAU:gamma-ray_bursts</Concept>
		</NOT>
		<Concept prob="90%">IAU:optical_outbursts</Concept>
	</Why>

(though I'm not sure how much semantic hiding is good, if VOEvents  
are supposed to be digestable by others).

My guess is that most VOEvent producers and consumers would be happy  
to be able to say anything standardized, but all approaches are  
reachable now and it's possible that the VOEvent community would like  
to have something totally different but of equal use to the rest of  
the VO, so speaking up and suggesting a type of solution to the  
Semantic WG would be very helpful.

Rick

P.S. New additions to the revised IAU Thesaurus of potential VOEvent  
use:

	glitches
	high-states
	low-states
	(various lensing things)

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
------------------------
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
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
-------------------------
MONET: a MOnitoring NEtwork of Telescopes
http://monet.Uni-Goettingen.de
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
-------------------------


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.ivoa.net/pipermail/voevent/attachments/20071008/0735859f/attachment-0001.html>