[ontac-forum] Building on the sholders of other ontology work

["Gary Berg-Cross" <gary.berg-cross@xxxxxxxx>]

It makes sense to resuse as much ontology work as we can and define "applications" of the target ontology to provide a goal and identify current weaknesses (such as pointed out by Bruce Smith and John Sowa).  After all years ago the field had already discussed the challenge of

type hierarchies of one ontology split sthe concept Object into Physical-Object and Abstract-Object, but another decomposes Object into Decomposable-Object, Nondecomposable-Object, Conscious-Being, and Non-Conscious-Thing. 

 

 

A simple way, perhaps too simple a way, of doing that is to use the 3 level approach to ontology mentioned, agree on some questions that the ontology will address say at the mid-level and then work to develop a top level for this.

 

On a more specific note, Pat mentions that we  could us " an existing one or one that is constructed from existing ones".   I'll post a basic article Two approaches for ontologies building: From-scratch and From existing data sources by

 

Djamal Benslimane, Ahmed Arara, kokou Yetongnon Faiez Gargouri, Hanene Ben Abdallah

 

 

Gary Berg-Cross

EM&I

Potomac, MD

I have sent a request for clarification of her first two comments to
Denise.  My responses to the last 3 are below;    (01)

>> (3) clearly state what the end game of an ontology is (there are of
course
multiple end games, but we need to begin to at least define what some
of them
are - otherwise they are motherhood, apple pie and everything in
between);    (02)

There are several goals for the ONTACWG, but the more technical issues
depend on adopting a Common Semantic Model (COSMO), which would be an
ontology -- it could be an existing one or one that is constructed from
existing ones by the ONTACWG.  The purpose of the COSMO would be to
specify the meanings of domain-specific terms and relations using the
COSMO so that applications will be able to interpret those terms
consistently for logical inferencing purposes.  This is not exactly
"motherhood", as somewhat less than a majority of people understand
what a precise logical definition of a semantic relation would look
like. Funny thing you should mention "motherhood".  My slide 7 uses
that as an example of a simple logical specification of a semantic
relation.    (03)

>> (4) distinguish between tools and techniques that can be used to
build an
ontology, and begin to identify where these tools and techniques are
best used
in the development of a robust ontology model;    (04)

There are several ontology-building tools available.  The subWg most
concerned with actually building an ontology will be the COSMO WG and
we will surely discuss what tools we think will be useful.
Did you have in mind specific tools that you would recommend?    (05)


>> and (5) review what work has already been done that is not labelled
'ontology'
per se but actually does move towards the end game.    (06)

One main purpose of the "Coordinating" working group is precisely to
try to attain a global view of all work done on knowledge
classifications systems, which include, as mentioned in the charter,
ontologies, taxonomies, thesauri, and graphical representations such as
UML, CMAP, Topic Maps, and MOF specifications.  It also includes not
only work that is completed, but to the extent possible a listing of
work that is in progress so that unintended duplication of effort on
the same topic can be avoided.  We want to maintain one or more
resource pages on the ONTACWG Wiki with pointers and perhaps also
descriptions of that work.  We are requesting all members of ONTACWG to
post references to any work they are aware of -- finished or ongoing --
to our "PointerPage" --    (07)

http://colab.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologyTaxonomyCoordinatingWG/Po
interPage    (08)

Or, you can send it to me and I will collate and try to eliminate
duplications.  Such references will, I think, help achieve the point 5
that you raise.  If anyone is willing to actually do a comparative
review of the available resources, or refer us to such a review already
done, that would be a great contribution.    (09)

Pat  

 

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