AboutThisWiki

= The Ontolog Community =

Welcome!

ONTOLOG is an open, international, virtual community of practice working on the application and adoption of ontological engineering and semantic technologies.

If you want to find out "What is an ontology?", this would be a good start, ... joining us would help too!

= Ontolog Community Wiki =

This is the ONTOLOG Community Wiki, an integral part of its Collaborative Work Environment ("CWE"). The wiki is intended for use by trusted team and community members of Projects and Communities of Practice (CoP's) for collaborative documentation. What we have here is a read-and-write web, as opposed to the ordinary web pages that you can only read from with your browser. Treat this as the restaurant napkin that you can sketch on, to share your idea with people sitting around the table. Except, this time, the wiki is your napkin, and the people you are sharing your idea with can be all around the world, sitting in front of their computers (or other computing devices) connected to the Internet; and they don't even necessarily have to be there at the same time you are sketching.

First time users should read more about the WikiWikiWeb and then play in the SandBox. Text formatting rules for this flavor of wiki can be found at the TextFormattingRules page. For rules about this Wiki, read our WikiStyleGuide and WikiProcessGuide. Please login (see: upper right corner, or create an account if you have not already done so) with a "WikiWord" styled user name (like "JaneDoe" or "AbrahamLincoln" ) for yourself before you proceed with a wiki authoring/editing session.

Charter of Ontolog (a.k.a. the "Ontolog Forum")
Ontolog is an open, international, virtual community of practice, whose membership will:


 * Discuss practical issues and strategies associated with the development and application of both formal and informal ontologies.


 * Identify ontological engineering approaches that might be applied to the UBL effort, as well as to the broader domain of eBusiness standardization efforts.


 * Strive to advance the field of ontological engineering and semantic technologies, and to help move them into main stream applications.

see also: OntologCharter

Communities of Practice & Projects

 * Regular Ontolog Community Activities (mostly virtual events)
 * MeetingsCalls - weekly conference calls, workshops, ...
 * OntologSpeaker - Invited Speaker Sessions & Events
 * OntologDiscussion - Scheduled Technical Discussion Sessions

''to add a project (after it has been started in accordance with the process below), add a bullet below with a project name, and start a wiki page on it. A project page template is available as an optional guide.''


 * UblOntology - UBL Ontology Project
 * ProtegeKIF - Protege-KIF Project
 * CctRepresentation - CCT-Representation: Modeling / Formalizing Representation of ebXML Core Component Types - Findings & Recommendations
 * EIDX Semantic Harmonization Panel presentation & paper - ConferenceCall_2004_12_01
 * ebXML CCTS v2.01 Feedback and Recommendations - sub-project to put together a response to UN/CEFACT - see: CctsResponse_V2pt01
 * NhinRfi - (US) National Health Information Network, Request for Information - project to put together a joint response
 * Health Ontology pilot and demonstration - see: HealthOntologyMapping

Discussion Forum Archives / File Workspace & Repository / Meetings & Conference Calls

 * [ontolog-forum] mailing-list discussion archives - http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/
 * File-Sharing Workspace / Document Archives - http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
 * Meetings, Conference Calls & Workshops - see: MeetingsCalls

News & Announcements

 * Dr. Michael Uschold from Boeing will be giving a talk entitled: "Semantic Filtering" on April 21, 2005. Please refer to details on ConferenceCall_2005_04_21 closer to the time.


 * ... (insert content here) ...

Noteworthy Events from the Recent Past

 * Professor William E. [[McCarthy]] from Michigan State University will be giving a talk entitled: "The Integration of an Accounting Domain Ontology (REA) with an Upper Ontology (SUMO)" on March 17, 2005. Refer to details on ConferenceCall_2005_03_17 ... Session Recording is now available!
 * Dr. Nicolas Rouquete from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology will be moderating our upcoming inaugural technical discussion session scheduled for Feb. 24, 2005. The topic was on "Ontologies and Meta-Ontologies: practical considerations". Refer to details on: OntologDiscussion/MetaOntologies_And_Ontologies ... Session Recording is now available!
 * Mr. Duane Nickull from Adobe Systems gave a talk entitled: "Sky Captain and the Service Oriented Architecture Reference Model of Tomorrow" on Feb. 17, 2005. See: ConferenceCall_2005_02_17 ... Session Recording is now available!
 * Mr. Conrad Bock from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology gave a virtual presentation on "PSL and Flow Models" on Jan. 27, 2005. See: ConferenceCall_2005_01_27 ... Session Recording is now Available!
 * Professor Mark Musen head of the Protege Project & of the Stanford Medical Informatics department gave the talk entitled: "Building ontologies from the ground up: When users set out to model their professional activity" on Thu Dec. 9, 2004. See: ConferenceCall_2004_12_09 Session Recording is available
 * AdamPease and PeterYim made a presentation, on behalf of the Ontolog Forum, at the EIDX "Semantic Harmonization" Panel Session, Wed Dec. 1, 2004. The presentation was titled: "Explicit Semantics for Business Ontology - an interim report from the ontolog forum". See: ConferenceCall_2004_12_01 They were supported by KurtConrad (onsite), LeoObrst and SteveRay (participating remotely) during the session. Session Recording is now Available!
 * Dr. Christopher Welty from the IBM Watson Research Center was our invited speaker Thu Nov. 18, 2004. Chris actually called in from the Laboratory for Applied Ontology in Trento, Italy, where he is working with NicolaGuarino now, and gave the talk entitled: "An Overview of OntoClean". See: ConferenceCall_2004_11_18 Session Recording is available
 * Professor Christopher Menzel of Texas A&M University gave a talk on: "SCL: A Logic Standard for Semantic Integration" Thu Nov. 4, 2004. See: ConferenceCall_2004_11_04 Session Recording is available
 * MarkPalmer from NIST gave a talk on their eBSC (eBusiness Standards Convergence) forum initiative Tue Oct. 26, 2004. See: ConferenceCall_2004_10_26
 * Dr. Michael Gruninger from NIST gave a presentation on "The Process Specification Language (PSL): Principles and Applications" at the ConferenceCall_2004_09_16.
 * The [ontolog] community had their 2nd face-to-face gathering, and a series of workshops and meeting in Washington DC during July 2004. See: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologWorkshop_July_2004
 * Dr. Steven R. Newcomb presented to the community "Ontological Engineering and the Topic Maps Reference Model" during our ConferenceCall_2004_06_10
 * PeterYim gave a presentation entitled "Shared Understanding - Standards, Ontologies & Collaboration" at the ConferenceCall_2004_05_20
 * Dr. Brand Niemann gave a presentation on "Harmonizing Semantics in E-Government" at our ConferenceCall_2004_04_22
 * Dr. Patrick Cassidy gave a presentation on the ProtegeKIF project during our ConferenceCall_2004_03_11
 * Dr. Steven Ray of NIST gave a presentation on "NIST's Semantic Approach to Standards and Interoperability" at our ConferenceCall_2004_02_12. Steve's powerpoint slides and some relevant links are available from the aforementioned page.
 * Dr. Leo Obrst gave a presentation on "Ontologies for Semantically Interoperable Systems" at our Conference Call 2004-01-15
 * First [ontolog] Meeting & Workshop: Wed ~ Fri Nov. 5~7, 2003, San Francisco. see: OntologWorkshop_Nov_2003
 * AdamPease gave a tutorial on "Introduction to Ontology & SUMO". His slides and other resources (including the archived audio stream of the session) are available at Tutorial_2003-05-29.

Membership

 * we currently have about 100 members in the community, coming from, at least, 13 different countries.


 * New Members
 * this is an OPEN, virtual Community of Practice ("CoP"), operated by the community itself
 * anyone who would want to participate and contribute in accordance with this CoP's charter, and consents to abide by its IPR policy and other by-laws which the community shall set-forth, is welcomed to join. To date, there is no fee or cost to participate, except that members are expected to be team players and contribute to our mission as much as, and in whatever way they can.
 * to join us, please
 * (a) subscribe yourself to the [ontolog-forum] via the web form at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/, and
 * (a1) instead of subscribing yourself, you may choose to send an e-mail to [mailto:peter.yim@cim3.com peter.yim@cim3.com] to confirming your desire to join the [ontolog-forum] (please indicate in your email whether you are participating as an active member or as an observer.)
 * (b) completing and submitting the abovementioned survey form.
 * if you have questions, please feel free to e-mail anyone of our co-conveners: [mailto:peter.yim@cim3.com Peter Yim], [mailto:conrad@SagebrushGroup.com Kurt Conrad] or [mailto:lobrst@mitre.org Leo Obrst].


 * Membership categories - Active Members & Observers (see discussion)


 * Members
 * a membership profile was compiled by KurtConrad based members' self-introduction message posts, and/or their responses to our member-survey
 * this "ontolog-member-survey-0" form is available online at http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/survey/ontolog0.html
 * all new members (and those who have not had a chance to complete it) is requested to fill-out and submit this survey form

Community Process

 * Process will be discussed and adopted among the "active" [ontolog] community members from time to time. "Observers" will not have voting rights to the establishment of the community process. (ref. Sep-02 terms of reference)


 * in the absence of [ontolog] community established process, our process will default to the current OASIS TC Process - see: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process.php (ref. Sep-02 terms of reference)
 * the start and termination of an ontolog project or subproject should default to the OASIS TC & SC process (where Ontolog "projects" processes will map to OASIS "TC" processes).
 * in essence, a new project needs to be supported by at least 3 members, have a project charter or mission statement, a kick-off conference call (or meeting) and a project home page, to get officially launched.

Publications & Deliverables

 * The Ontolog Community's Response to the UN/CEFACT Core Components Working Group's CCTS (Core Component Technical Specifications) v2.01 solicitation for comments and candidate requirements for the next version -- Memorandum and Report, dated Jan. 21, 2004.
 * The Ontolog Community's open Response to the National Health Information Network RFI (of 2004.11.15), collaboratively authored by the NhinRfi response team, was delivered to the office of Dr. David Brailer, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, on Jan. 18, 2005.
 * The whitepaper "A Case for the Ontological Expression of E-Business Standards" by KurtConrad, BoNewman and BobSmith, is released at the Dec. 1, 2004 EIDX "Semantic Harmonization" Panel Session (Menlo Park, CA, USA). This paper is based on work of the Ontolog Forum and its [CCT-Representation] project.
 * "Collaborating to Develop an Ontological Basis for E-Business Standards" - presented by PeterYim at the 2nd Ontolog Face-to-face Meeting held at the workshop entitled "Extending Enterprise Ontologies: Levels, Limits, and Tensions", as part of the 7th International Protégé Conference on July 6, 2004 at the National Institute of Health (Bethesda, MD, USA.)
 * "Ontolog - UBL Ontology Project Status Report". Compiled by KurtConrad. First relased on 2003-04-28. The report summarizes the [ontolog-forum]'s progress-to-date and presented to the UBL TC. Full report available at http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/pub/report/OntologUBLOntologyProjectReport--KurtConrad_20030428.pdf

Tools

 * ToolsCollaboration
 * SUO-KIF Browser (v1.8, by MichalSevcenko, with SUMO v1.566) - http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/kifb
 * See also http://virtual.cvut.cz:8080/ksmsaWeb/browser/title?expand=Root-sumo for a new version of the ontology browsing and editing system which handles browsing and editing of SUMO and WordNet; and supports the multiple language displays of SUMO.
 * SIGMA Knowledge Engineering Environment (alpha release, by AdamPease)
 * http://sigma.ontologyportal.org:4010/sigma/Browse.jsp?kb=SUMO&lang=en ; or
 * http://sigma2.cim3.net:8080/sigma/login.html
 * when prompted for login, the read access authentication pair is: username="user"; password="user" (contact AdamPease for write access)
 * refer to: SUO-KIF Manual and Sigma User Manual
 * note that the inference engine does not constrain answers to the argument type contraints on KIF relations. This is a known problem and may on occasion cause bad results from the inference engine.
 * see also: http://sourceforge.net/projects/sigmakee/
 * Protege-2000 - To download and install, visit http://protege.stanford.edu download page
 * To try navigating the SMINK007 ontology (by PatCassidy) through remote vnc access: (available only at pre-arranged sessions)
 * make sure the vnc2 server is up (contact PeterYim if unsure), and point your browser to: http://vnc2.cim3.net:5800/ pw="ontology"
 * when inside the vnc2 computer, use Protege-2000 v1.8 and open project "F:\CoP\ontolog\project\protege-kif\smink007\SMINK007a.pprj"
 * A survey on members' views on ontology tools and repository is being conducted
 * this "ontolog-tool-survey-1" form is available online at http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/survey/ontolog1.html
 * all new members (and those who have not had a chance to complete it) is requested to fill-out and submit this survey form about ontology-tools they use or prefer
 * see interim survey results at http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2002-11/msg00035.html
 * raw member survey responses can be found at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/resource/survey/data/ontolog1-tools/
 * LeoObrst's recommendation: Ontology Building: A Survey of Editing Tools, by Michael Denny (published November 06, 2002 on xml.com)
 * TemplateProjectPage

More about Collaborative Work Environments ("CWEs")

 * COMMUNITY WEBBOARD by Nancy Cohen, Open Magazine
 * Our Shared Playground - An Interview with Michael Schrage by Marcia Conner, LiNE Zine
 * Leveraging Effective Collaboration in Communities & Open Distributed Teams by PeterYim of CIM3 (March 2004)
 * Toward High-Performance Organizations: A Strategic Role for Groupware by DougEngelbart (June 1992)
 * ... more about wiki's - see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
 * ... about Purple Numbers - see: http://ps1.cim3.net/ps.php
 * Since we are using, predominantly, Open Source or Free Software in this CWE, the article: "Understanding Open Source Software" by Mark Webbink, Esq. of Red Hat (published Dec. 31, 2003) should help explain what "open source sofwtare" is, and demystify some of the legal and intellectual property rights issues in software licensing.

Intellectual Property Rights Policy

 * the [ontolog-forum] is chartered to be an OPEN forum. As such, all contribution to this forum by its community membership shall have been made under an open content license, open publication license or one of the free software or open source licenses. (See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/free_content)
 * unless otherwise specified, content within the [ontolog-forum] collaborative work environment shall be subject to OpenContent License (OPL), Version 1.0, July 14, 1998 or its successor. (see http://opencontent.org/opl.shtml)
 * when in doubt, IPR matters relating to the [ontolog-forum] default to the OASIS IPR policy (in accordance with the processes defined in our reconstitution of September 2002.)
 * those who are unable to contribute under the above licensing arrangements should refrain from contributing to the [ontolog-forum] content.

CreditsAcknowledgement

 * If you have questions about ONTOLOG (after browsing these pages), feel free to email either one of our 3 co-conveners:
 * PeterYim [mailto:peter.yim@cim3.com peter.yim@cim3.com]
 * KurtConrad [mailto:conrad@sagebrushgroup.com conrad@sagebrushgroup.com]
 * LeoObrst [mailto:lobrst@mitre.org lobrst@mitre.org]