Donald's solution feels a little circular. The interpretation of
these relations still need a formal specification, which OWL would do
nicely for, but then OWL already defines similar constructs.
I think the "one true ontology" idea fails simply through open world
semantics; I'm not sure the community should be aiming to formally
agree on one true identity of something, but should formally agree on
how to formally describe something so that reasoning/classification
agents can provide the mechanism to highlight what is same or
different identity.
On 31/07/2006, at 12:31 PM, Donald Doherty wrote:
Eric,
What you call "covering" below seems particularly important. In my
view,
there can never be one true ontology, especially in science (unless
we're
done and have reached complete knowledge...if that's possible). You
present
an interesting solution...
Don
Donald Doherty, Ph.D.
Brainstage Research, Inc.
www.brainstage.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
412-478-4552
[snip]
In the absence of any formal ontology that could cover all life
sciences data records (e.g., Genes), a relational instance model might
be more practical and appealing; A transitive rule could be proposed
that states all data records referencing the same bio/chem-entity
would
be viewed as "bio/chem entity" equivalent, regardless of what
ontology/rdfschema were used to define each of them:
(?data1 hcls:isDefinedAs ?ent) AND (?data2 hcls:isDefinedAs ?ent) ->
(?data1 hcls:sameEntityAs ?data2 )
This is an example of what I had suggested as a "Covering", since
there
is no explicit need to use ontologies to map data records to common
class-based concepts. owl:sameAs could be used hear, but the
'sameEntityAs' relation could have more selective meaning for this
community in terms of data records and 'things'. I leave it open for
discussion...
I'd be interested to hear how important and practical the points
raised
here are. The main objective I have is to try and get our common
discussion to focus on some basic, agreeable points that we can work
together on over the next (hopefully) few weeks.
cheers,
Eric
Eric Neumann, PhD
co-chair, W3C Healthcare and Life Sciences,
and Senior Director Product Strategy
Teranode Corporation
83 South King Street, Suite 800
Seattle, WA 98104
+1 (781)856-9132
www.teranode.com
