On May 22, 2013, at 04:41, Phillip Lord wrote: > I'm pleased to announce the release of tawny-owl 0.11. > > What is it? > ========== > > This package allows users to construct OWL ontologies ...
Not surprisingly, most Clojurists are not familiar with ontologies in general or OWL ontologies in particular. This is a large topic area; this is a modest effort to provide background information. -r The word "ontology" is used in two different (though related) ways. The historic meaning is mostly helpful as background: Ontology ... is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence, or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, ontology deals with questions concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology Computer-based ontologies (eg, OWL ontologies) are sets of facts and rules about items in the domain of discourse: In computer science and information science, an ontology formally represents knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain, and the relationships between pairs of concepts. It can be used to model a domain and support reasoning about concepts. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(information_science) These facts and rules can allow programs to make inferences and can also be used to establish a controlled vocabulary (allowing human conversations to avoid ambiguity and confusion). OWL ontologies are typically constructed as "is a" hierarchies describing categories (eg, Thing > Food > Pizza). An item can be placed in multiple categories (eg, Thing > Product > Pizza) and relations (eg, Pizza goesWith Beer) are added to link them. So, the ontology is really more of a directed graph than a tree. OWL (Web Ontology Language) is a product of the Semantic Web effort. It is generally used with technologies such as RDF (Resource Description Framework), RDFS (RDF Schema), SPARQL, and RDF Triplestores. So, for example, someone might set up an RDF Triplestore with a large number of facts about (say) medicine. RDFS and OWL could be used to provide a framework for reasoning about these facts. A query language (eg, SPARQL) could then be used to answer questions. Here are some relevant links, as starting points: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDF_Schema http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARQL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triplestore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Ontology_Language http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-overview/ I also recommend these books, which include programmer-friendly introductions to this area. "Learning SPARQL" Bob DuCharme "Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist" Dean Allemang, Jim Hendler -- http://www.cfcl.com/rdm Rich Morin http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume r...@cfcl.com http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/weblog +1 650-873-7841 Software system design, development, and documentation -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
