On May 16, 2007, at 6:48 AM, Eric Jain wrote:
Phillip Lord wrote:
"EJ" == Eric Jain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
EJ> Just catching up on reading papers :-)
EJ> <http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/8/S3/S2>
EJ> "It is also useful to know who believes something and
EJ> why. However, there is no standard way of expressing such
EJ> information about a statement [...]"
EJ> Reification?
That's who, not why. The Gene Ontologies evidence codes are and
references are much closer. Also, I am not sure of the semantics
of reification. Does it mean "I
made this statement", "I believe this statement" or "I am the person
responsible for the evidence on which this statement is based". All
three are independent I think.
I assume what it means depends on the property that is used? In
place of (or in addition to) the popular dc:creator you could
introduce properties such as supportedBy, or whatnot. Arguably the
lack of established properties for such information may be a bit of
a problem, but the paper goes on to mention named graphs as a
possible solution, so that's not the level we're talking at. In any
case, no big deal, just another piece of evidence that reification
is an ugly neglected step-child :-)
Actually, DC provides several elements that could assist in providing
greater subtlety to such reified expressions:
dc:creator (as Eric points out)
dc:contributor
dc:publisher
dc:coverage
dc:source
The problem - as Bijan stated - is there is neither a standard syntax
for expressing this subtlety - nor are there even sufficiently
narrow, standard practices for what objects you link (i.e., the
range) when using these specific dc elements. In the end, to make
use of these entities when expressing subtle provenance information,
one would still need to embed a great deal of logic in your
application to carry this burden - and that would be YOUR logic built
on YOUR approach to representing this information, which, whether
given by a formal syntax or not, others aren't likely to share.
OWL 1.1 does provide some help in this realm, as Bijan mentioned. It
is my understanding OWL 2.0 will provide even more.
Cheers,
Bill
Bill Bug
Senior Research Analyst/Ontological Engineer
Laboratory for Bioimaging & Anatomical Informatics
www.neuroterrain.org
Department of Neurobiology & Anatomy
Drexel University College of Medicine
2900 Queen Lane
Philadelphia, PA 19129
215 991 8430 (ph)
610 457 0443 (mobile)
215 843 9367 (fax)
Please Note: I now have a new email - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
