One comment on versioning issues (question2) . The matter is more
complex
than the answer suggests. If a clinical system ever refers to a
URI in
BioPortal this URI should stay forever. Even if a new version of the
ontology is deployed the original URI should still point to the
old term
or concept, even if it is deprecated. So versioning is more than a
development or collaboration issue. I don't know wether the
answer given
to question 3 solves this.
______________________________________
Dr. Dirk Colaert MD
Advanced Clinical Application Research Manager
Agfa Healthcare mobile: +32 497 470 871
Daniel Rubin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
10/01/2007 01:46
To
"w3c semweb hcls" <public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org>
cc
Subject
Answers to questions about BioPortal
Dear HCLSIG users,
We have received a number of questions/comments from you for our
BioPortal
sneak preview. Please continue to provide comments/suggestions as
this
will help us to ensure BioPortal meets the community needs. We have
collected the following recent feedback from several different
members of
this list, and would like to summarize our responses to them
below to
clarify some of the recent questions:
1. Looking at the interface, it is not clear to me how best to
reference
an element of the ontologies there-- is there a URI mechanism
that can be
used directly by outside researchers? How does
this relate to the DOID # (i.e., namespaces)?
Yes, a URI mechanism will be made available soon. Ontologies will
have
their own namespaces defined by the authors, or if none is
provided, we
will create one based on our bioontology.org namespace.
2. Also, can you provide more details on how the BioPortal will
provide
versioning? Last I understood, there were no SVN capabilities
with the
BioPortal - has that changed or did I misunderstand the set-up?
It is important to understand that BioPortal is a Web application
that
accesses an ontology library, and that it is not a content
management
system (such as cvs and subversion). BioPortal stores the released
versions of ontologies and indexes their content. For ontology
development, the authors use their preferred local systems (local
cvs,
svn, sourceforge, or gforge). When they create a new version that
is ready
to be released publicly, it is submitted directly to BioPortal by
the
author. In some cases, we may be able to set up URL pull into
BioPortal on
a regular basis.
3. Will there be a general way to identify deprecated terms in the
ontologies posted in BioPortal, how does LexGrid handle this
information?
Yes, and LexGrid provides this functionality.
4. Are you [Mark Musen] the person to request updates of information
currently displayed on the site?
You can contact Daniel Rubin.
5. The terms of service says: "Except as expressly prohibited on
the Site,
you are permitted to view, copy, print and distribute
publications and
documents within this Site, subject to your agreement that:...
You will
display the below copyright notice and other proprietary notices
on every
copy you make" I read this as saying that anything submitted to the
repository would be copyright "Copyright (c) 2005-2006, The Board of
Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights
reserved.",
which I would guess some would consider unacceptable.
This is not the intended interpretation and we will change the
wording of
the terms.
6. Termination of Use: "You agree that The National Center for
Biomedical
Ontology may, in its sole discretion, at any time terminate your
access to
the Site and any account(s) you may have in connection
with the Site. Access to the Site may be monitored by The
National Center
for Biomedical Ontology." This is scary. There ought to be
explicit cause
for termination, otherwise people might be reluctant to entrust
their work
to the site.
We will modify the terms to declare the conditions that would be
a cause
for termination.
7. Disclaimer: "... PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE"
BASIS... ".
(B The W3C has taken steps to ensure that access to the files
hosted at
the W3C domain will be maintained under a variety of
circumstances, using
mirrors, externals services, etc. It would be desirable that similar
actions be taken by the NCBO, and some mention of them included
in the
terms of service, particularly if URIs in the bioontology.org
namespace
are to be used.
NCBO sites are hosted by Stanford Information Technology
Services, the
same people who host the Stanford Hospital clinical database and
Highwire
Press. We anticipate having reliable availability of the
services we
provide.
8. Use of ontologies: "Only the submitter of the ontology will be
able to
modify it or submit new versions". B In a project such as ours
that is
group oriented, it is likely that individuals will come and go. I
think
there needs to be some notion of group access so that we aren't
vulnerable
to a key individual becoming unavailable.
Yes, we are planning on adding group access.
9. It wasn't clear to me whether there was developer support e.g.
svn
access. I don't know whether Helen et. all had in mind using such
services
at W3C, but such access is certainly part of the development
cycle of
projects such as ours. Is the model that ontology developers use
external
sites for this and only submit relatively stable versions of the
ontology
to the BioPortal?
Correct. The model is that ontology developers use external
resources such
as sourceforge or their own local cvs for internal development,
and they
submit stable release versions of their ontologies to the BioPortal.
-BiPortal Team.
