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Thomas B. Passin wrote:
>
> Walter, even though I agree with your remarks generally, I do not think
that
> Roger's work here is as far off the mark as you say. Your counter example
> of a Customs application is good and right on the point, but consider
this.
> If the Customs application knows what a "Camera" is - according to both
> ontologies - then it probably has enough info to decide if the thing is a
> dutiable good or not by consulting its own expertise. If it can use the
SLR
> ontology to bounce from SRL up to Camera, and __if__ it can find out that
> the SLR's Camera is equivalent to the Custom's Camera, then the app is all
> set.
There are several ways to do this:
1) The Customs ontology uses the SLR ontology "camera" class directly using
its URI. e.g.
http://example.org/CameraOntology#camera
2) One can explicitly state the logical equivalence between two classes (the
sets have identical members) as:
customs:Camera owl:sameClassAs camera:camera .
3) With the appropriate "surrounding information" an OWL inferencing engine
can *infer* that the classes are identical.
i.e. given a bunch of triples/statements the OWL engine spits out
=>
customs:Camera owl:sameClassAs camera:camera .
>
> The key is not for each ontology to clutter up the other (as you
suggestesd
> might have to happen), but to establish the equivalence. OTOH, I
personally
> think that is the hard part! One problem among many is to how to know
when
> two terms are in fact "equivalent" since that will usually imply a lot of
> background knowledge that may or may not be articulated or shared.
>
Right, or just use the term directly and there is no question that customs
is talking about a camera. That's the point of shared ontologies: you don't
need to redefine everything in every ontology.
Jonathan
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