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Ontolog Forum

Joint Ontolog-OOR Panel Discussion Session - Thu 6-August-2009

Topic: Ontology Repository Research Issues

Abstract: In this session, potential OpenOntologyRepository (OOR) contributors will discuss longer term issues relating to both tools and content development. See developing thoughts at: OOR/ResearchIssues

Session Chair: Professor KenBaclawski (Northeastern University) - [ opening slides ]

Panelists:

  • Professor MichaelGruninger (University of Toronto)
  • Ms. ElisaKendall (Sandpiper Software)
  • Mr. BartGajderowicz (Ryerson University, Canada)
  • Dr. Mathieu d'Aquin (Open University, UK)
  • Dr. ToddSchneider (Raytheon)

Archives

Conference Call Details

  • Date: Thursday, August 6, 2009
  • Start Time: 10:30am PDT / 1:30pm EDT / 7:30pm CEST / 6:30pm BST / 17:30 UTC
  • Expected Call Duration: ~2.0 hours
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Attendees

Abstract

  • "COLORE: Common Logic Ontology Repository" by Michael Grüninger
    • Abstract: The purpose and architecture of COLORE are described.
  • "OOR for Public Sector Use" by Elisa Kendall
    • Abstract: Requirements for OOR for use in the public sector, with

emphasis on metadata requirements and related research questions, are identified.

  • "Utilizing Uncertainty for Automated Ontology Mapping" by Bart Gajderowicz
    • Abstract: A mapping module for the OOR platform
  • "Ontology Repositories: Discussions and Perspectives" by Mathieu d'Aquin
    • Abstract: Besides the OOR initiatives, many different systems have been

developed that provide ontology repository facilities. While they have a lot in common, many elements and features seems to be missing, and I will introduce a few of them (support in finding suitable ontologies, relations between ontologies, interoperability between systems), hoping to generate discussions on the current research and development challenges in the area of ontology repositories.

  • "OOR Research Questions" by Todd Schneider
    • Abstract: Research questions on these topics
      • Ontology driven development
      • Administration
      • Terminology mediation
      • Interpretation

Resources

  • OOR/ResearchIssues
  • OpenOntologyRepository - Homepage for this OOR initiative
  • from the two recent Ontolog-OOR panel sessions:
    • ConferenceCall_2009_07_16
    • ConferenceCall_2009_07_30
  • [ oor-forum ] message archive - http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/oor-forum/
    • (if you are not yet subscribed) you may subscribe yourself to the [ oor-forum ] listserv, by sending a blank email to <oor-forum-join [at] ontolog.cim3.net> from your subscribing email address, and then follow the instructions you receive back from the mailing list system.

Agenda

1. Opening by session Chair (KenBaclawski)

2. Perspectives from the Panel

3. Q & A and Open Discussion (All) -- please refer to process above

4. Summary and Next Steps (KenBaclawski)

Proceedings

Please refer to the archives above

===IM Chat Transcript captured during the session=== ...

Mike Bennett: Manufacturing standards are surely not the only kinds of

standards? e.g. financial standards

Arturo Sanchez: Question for Michael: have you studied decidability properties

of the logical relationships among ontologies mentioned on slide 4 (e.g.,

extension). How about complexity?

Michael Grüninger: Response to Mike Bennett: Of course, COLORE will not be

restricted to manufacturing standards, but since we are receiving our funding

through the Dept of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering our emphasis is on

manufacturing standards. In the context of the OOR project, we definitely need

to encompass all of the standards discussed at the 2009 Ontology Summit.

Mike Bennett: Thanks Michael. I mention it because the sorts of fundamental

building blocks you mention were all needed to develop the financial industry

ontology we're working on, and I'd expect to try and align with the things you

are talking about, and with "industrial" standards generally (and UN

etc. standards e.g. FAO Country Ontology).

Pat Cassidy: MIke: do we yet have examples of 'definably interpretable' domain

ontologies interpretable with respect to some foundation ontology? That is the

mechanism that seems to me to be the most plausible means to general semantic

interoperability, even in the absence of a repository. It will be nice to have

examples to point to.

Ravi Sharma: Mike - mereotopology is just one example I hope? because in rela

manufacturing life, the processes of assembly and sequence of events and

processes are quite seperable, often!

Mike Bennett: @Pat, Ravi: Mike = Michael I presume.

Ravi Sharma: Elisa - reuse is good to think but can wwe give some concrete

examples, such as a part, process, domain levels?

Elisa Kendall: Question for Michael (when time permits): Have you looked at a

combination of ISO 11179 and 19763 as starting points for the metadata you

might need for COLORE? I realize that they may not be complete in terms of the

kinds of characterization you might want to do, but ... the crosswalk I

mentioned might be helpful if you haven't already created something like that

yourselves

Joel Bender: Elisa - when you talked about "Requirements range from

understanding sources ... at the ontology level to detailed provenance at the

fact/individual level" and said that was independent of the encoding - I'm

curious how you think that could actually be accomplished.

Ravi Sharma: BArt - fuzzy levels not only at probabilistic levels, but do we not

have to define probabilistIC relationships or fuzzy relationship groupings to

create or associate triples with a search or identify objects of relevance

Elisa Kendall: Response to Ravi: There are many kinds of reuse under consideration --

ranging from general / utility / foundational (to use Michael's term)

ontologies supporting messaging (headers, channel definitions, etc. for an

event bus) and other aspects of software engineering, to reusable terms

defining missions, spacecraft, instruments ... some of which are dictated by

standards from CCSDS and others

Bart Gajderowicz: @Ravi: yes, creating probabilistic and fuzzy relationships are

key, these may be added by ontologists if they are relevant to the domain or

context, but may also be derived through machine learning based on the

experiences being represented by the ontology, and added as meta data

specifically for performing mappings

Ravi Sharma: Elisa - thanks, but we need to start thinking about how valuable

the reuse has been, almost all casses require a commonly understood

"framework", Concept or Context or many such agreements before reuse is

possible similar to code or software component or pattern reuse?

Elisa Kendall: Response to Joel: One approach might be to have registry-level metadata

defined (standards based, possibly using ISO 11179, 19763, 1087, etc.) at the

registry level, to provide the level of provenance required per ontology, and

then incorporate annotations for the ontologies themselves, where possible.

The annotations could be managed independently of the ontologies themselves,

but don't necessarily need to be -- BioPortal does some of this, or is starting

to do some of this, but for our work, we anticipate that internal ontology and

model developers will provide this as part of the registration process. This

is only possible if participants in the registry agree to do so, of course --

and given that we're dealing with a controlled environment for this project, we

can also provide the submission processes and requirements. That may not be

doable on a broader, open level, though we could suggest some minimal set of

annotations that we would like to see, and even provide templates that are

representation-specific

Joel Bender: thank you!

Michael Grüninger: Response to Pat Cassidy: We have several papers that specify

the definable interpretations. One appeared earlier this year at the

Commonsense Reasoning Symposium (relating process ontologies) and the other

will appear in AI Journal, which relates a particular mereotopology with

classes of lattices. I just noticed that these papers are not on our website

yet -- I will post them there later.

Michael Grüninger: Response to Elisa: You're right -- they key is metadata about

the ontologies. I think that ISO19763 provides a good framework for capturing

the relevant ontology relationships as metadata, but we still need to

understand what relationships are essential to ontology design and reuse.

Michael Grüninger: Response to Ravi: Yes, of course, mereotopology is just one

example. Using application scenarios that require the integration of multiple

ontologies (as you suggest) is the right way to go in driving the development

of the repository.

Ravi Sharma: Michael - we also need to agree on what minimum type of

relationships are required for at least a minimal or upper ontology. Then Meta

data level comparisons of two or more ontology constructs (patterns like -

including metadata) can be more productive or efficient?

Ravi Sharma: Mathieu - wonderful; if there is nothing common that these exist as

independent un connected ontologies, then only benefit is by the ingeneuity of

the User as to how they use these unconnected ontologies? like going to grocery

store and coming home to cook the food?

Mathieu Daquin: Ravi - very good point. Nothing connects two ontologies

better than their combined use/application. Hard to monitor, though.

Ravi Sharma: Todd - what do you mean by Code in repository? I thought we support

multiple languages, patterns, fraworks and domains and even globalization in

principle?

Mike Bennett: Terminology: in terms of metadata for ontologies, would this not

be realised by way of meta-terms for aliases, synonyms? Should synonym and a

single "alias" for reference within ODD be two separate tags?

Arturo Sanchez: Comment for Todd and Michael: the practical issue is how can

end-users express their 'intentions' or 'intuitions' using existing ontologies

w/o having prior training in formal ontologies. Guided selection (via

interpretations using mathematical structures) might lead to choosing axioms

the end-user (the person modelling a certain situation) might not find

'intuitively' compelling. So, I think that Michael and Todd presented two

important extremes of the problem: (1) importance of formalizing relationships

among ontologies; (2) practical use of collections of ontologies. I'm

interested in the research problem of bridging these two extremes.

Ravi Sharma: Ken- your slide 8 is a representation of executable ontologies

where the data from sensors etc get filled based on the metadata values and

relationships think of this as templates and filled in forms.

Mike Bennett: @Ken: domains is a bit of a simplification in that slide I

presume? Terms for legal, mathematical, accounting etc. have terms which

/should/ be reused in models in other domains - for instance much of business

meaning is grounded in legal realities.

Ravi Sharma: Ken- slide 11 reasoning, relationships and nature of Things

(objects) are key parameters in achieving semantics as well as

interoperability.

Mike Bennett: @Ravi: is one issue the question of whether a given ontology

simply /asserts/ that some term is meaningful, or whether it has enough facts

defined about the thing to reliably pin down its meaning, i.e. the "context"

that was spoken of.

Ken Baclawski: @Mike: I fully agree with you. The diagram does not show

inter-ontology relationships. It really must. Is there an easy way to show

this in the diagram?

Mike Bennett: @Ken: Possibly not, other than by creating an overall map

somehow...

Ravi Sharma: to Ken - just for record, I document that we need a map and or a

framework or an agreement on domains and some upperlevel ontology to include

others that would somehow be parts or subset of it and then there is hope for

interoperability or reuse.

Ken Baclawski: @Ravi: Executable ontologies is a very interesting idea. In

practice, scientists acquire their data and then analyze it and only as the

last step do they annotate it for reuse. It would be quite a change in

attitude to use the metadata annotations to drive the sensor data acquisition.

Ravi Sharma: Ken- The ontology part is new but for SOS earth science data we do

a metadata based query and identify the datasets of interest say using HDF_EOS

set of metadata, then we navigate to those sets, ontology would be akin to

relatime further processing these datasets for knowledge or at least

information extraction.

Ken Baclawski: @Ravi: Is that really true? While the ideal is to take a

top-down approach, in practice we have a large number of relatively independent

communities that deal with interoperability only after the fact.

Ravi Sharma: Ken - the community of earth scientists using satellite (NASA) data

agreed on a framework not ontology in 1996-98 and then these datasets were

generated, hence we can subset metadata values and then traverse across the

areas (geotemporal) of interest.

Mike Bennett: There was a good talk a year or so back about a set of

relationships between ontology elements that are analogous to the owl:sameAS

but a much broader set of such e.g. sub-sets and the like.

Ravi Sharma: Mike- yes but defining a broader set of sameAs implies knowledge

built-in in the owl:sameAs

Michael Grüninger: Sorry, I have another call at 3:30. Great meeting today!

Mike Bennett: @Ravi: Good point.

Mike Bennett: @Elisa: you are describing a quality assurance framework - great

points

Ravi Sharma: Elisa - I fully appreciate your public sector need comment and

similarly for citizen services I hope.

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Audio Recording of this Session

Special thanks to Kurt Conrad for his help in making the audio recording of this session. =ppy

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  • Conference Date and Time: 6-Aug-2009 10:38am~12:30pm PDT
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