Devices Ontology WG Mtg 2009.07.07

Agenda/minutes for Device Ontology Working Group meeting 2009.07.07

Agenda

  1. Logistics: Welcome, Minutes Review, Agenda Review, Chat Room
  2. W3C SSN report
  3. Summary of "Proper use of rdfs:domain and rdfs:range" discussion
  4. Status of action items
  5. Review ontology and recent updates
  6. End Logistics: Next meeting, Action items, Attendees

Minutes

Logistics: Welcome, Minutes Review, Agenda Review, Chat Room

Minutes review.

Agenda approval.

Status of Action Items

  • [Nan,Roy] Review current definitions and include others like: 'instrument', 'device', 'transducer'
  • [Luis] Update observation ontology according to today's comments.
  • [Nan] See what additional properties to associate to Deployment.
  • [all] Review instructions and facets outline and pick pending items (and/or suggest new ones) for inclusion in ontology. Send questions/suggestions to the mailing list.
  • [Carlos] Verify pending submitted suggested changes and update ontology or email questions accordingly. --> See pending mods to ontology: this page is intended to gather all suggested changes that are pending. Please review from time to time for accuracy.
  • Roy has reviewed definitions with his new appreciation for the inheritance. The only question he raised is whether we need the two words 'system' and 'device', or are they the same thing? John says all devices are systems, but not all systems are devices. Even if a mooring is a device, a set of moorings is not a device -- but is still a system. Yet Roy views these other things as devices too.
  • Does name of ontology ("Device") mean we should not make a higher level concept like 'system' a part of the ontology? And where is the concept of 'device' in the ontology? (Previously discussed.)
  • Need to be specific about whether 'system' is a physical thing or not, current assumptions are that it is hardware even though that is not in the definition.
  • If we replace 'System' with 'Device', it does not appear to break anything. Composition remains intact. SensorML makes atomic vs composite clear, it's OK that our main class does not distinguish.

W3C SSN

  • The W3C SSN ontology work has selected a "starting point" ontology (the CSIRO ontology, diagram shown in our Ontology Diagrams) and a few other ontologies that merit contributing to it, MMI being one of those contributing ontologies.
  • The MMI device ontology facets are also being reviewed for incorporation.
  • John is talking with Carlos and Luis about the potential value (and pain) of making a list of all the terms in all the ontologies, and whether this would make it easy to see what concepts have and haven't been incorporated.)
    • Carlos: so, it would be a vocabulary for each ontology, and only definitions of the central terms, not the ontology per se, right?  Right.
    • BTW, note that I have created and registered a vocabulary, http://mmisw.org/ont/mmi/devterm, with some of the definitions we have in our terms page. Not sure if this is a good approach (in concrete, the device ontology itself would include all relevant definitions, so one other vocabulary with the same definitions seems redundant(?)).
  • Next meeting of the device ontology team, we will talk about the application of this work to our ontology -- do we want to integrate these, and if so how?

Summary of "Proper use of rdfs:domain and rdfs:range" discussion

  • Carlos offers that it appears we have not done anything wrong in the current approach, but it may need some refinement for clarity, for instance by adding labels.
  • John suggests that to the extent our terms (in the URIs) represent the meaning we're trying to give those terms, we should review the list to see where the terms are not in clear agreement with the domain and/or range that is assigned. Otherwise it will be confusing to the readers, just like poor variable names in code make the code hard to maintain.
  • Seems to be a consensus that keeping this on the to-do list is a good thing, but it isn't urgent. Carlos should feel free to incorporate suggested changes in his change list.

Review ontology

Current version: http://mmisw.org/ont/mmi/20090609T064417/device:

No ontology review activities today, other than the ones in the first item above.

End Logistics: Next meeting, Action items, Attendees

New action Items

  • [all] Submit your additions to the ontology to Carlos.
  • [Carlos] Update list of possible ontology changes, in time for the meeting.
  • [Roy] Follow up on definition questions/discussions with Nan

Next Telecon Time

Next telecon is Tuesday 2009-07-21 at 1500 UTC.  (1600 UTC in winter)

Regrets: Roy, Bob not available

Agenda:

  • How to incorporate W3C work into MMI Device Ontology
  • Review possible changes to ontology
  • ...something else that I didn't capture...

Attendees:

  • Bruce Andrews
  • Bob Arko
  • John Graybeal
  • Roy Lowry
  • Carlos Rueda

Chat room messages:

 

Roy Lowry: Anyone there?
Carlos Rueda: hi Roy.  I just joined.   John is going to start the call
Carlos Rueda: http://marinemetadata.org/community/teams/ontdevices/ontdevpend
Posted July 6th, 2009 by carueda
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