ConferenceCall 2012 07 17

= Joint IAOA-OOR-Ontolog "Ontologies and Standards" mini-series session-3 - Tue 2012_07_17 =

Title: "Standardisation Coordination and Ontology Repositories"

Session Co-chairs: Professor MichaelGruninger (University of Toronto) & Professor JohnBateman (University of Bremen)

Archives:


 * Abstract
 * Agenda
 *  Prepared slides
 * Audio recording of the session [ 1:14:28 ; mp3 ; 8.53 MB ]
 * transcript of the online chat during the session
 * Additional Resources

Conference Call Details:

 * Date: Tuesday, 17-Jul-2012
 * Start Time: 8:30am PDT / 11:30am EDT / 5:30pm CEST / 15:30 UTC
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 * Expected Call Duration: ~1.5 hours


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Attendees

 * Attended:
 * MichaelGruninger (co-chair)
 * JohnBateman (co-chair)
 * PeterYim
 * TerryLongstreth
 * SteveRay
 * LeoObrst
 * MikeDean
 * TomTinsley
 * KenBaclawski
 * Duncan Goheen (Global Integrated Energy)
 * PatCassidy
 * JohnGraybeal
 * NaicongLi
 * PierreYvesSchobbens


 * Expecting:
 * ... if you are coming to the meeting, please add your name above (plus your affiliation, if you aren't already a member of the community) above, or e-mail  so that we can reserve enough resources to support everyone's participation. ...
 * ... if you are coming to the meeting, please add your name above (plus your affiliation, if you aren't already a member of the community) above, or e-mail  so that we can reserve enough resources to support everyone's participation. ...


 * Regrets:
 * ToddSchneider (traveling)
 * TimDarr
 * KevinTyson

Abstract
Title: "Standardisation Coordination and Ontology Repositories"

Abstract:

The upcoming FOIS Conference will feature meetings of the SIGs and Technical Committees of IAOA (International Association of Ontology and its Applications), in particular, the Standarisation Coordination Committee and the Ontology Repositories Committees. The Conference Call of July 17 will be devoted to preparation for these two Committee Meetings. The focus will be on identifying progress from the past year and to collect ideas for how IAOA can best support work in ontology-based standards and ontology repositories.

If people cannot physically attend FOIS, this will be a great opportunity to provide input.

Agenda
Presentation: "Standardisation Coordination and Ontology Repositories"


 * Session Format: this is a virtual session conducted over an augmented conference call


 * 1. Opening - co-chairs ... [ slides ]
 * 1.1 participants self-introduction (if the number of participants is less than 20) [max 0.5 min. each]
 * 2. Framing the issues
 * 3. Q & A and open discussion [ All ] -- please refer to process above
 * 4. Summary / Next steps / Announcements - (co-chairs)

Proceedings:
Please refer to the above

IM Chat Transcript captured during the session:

see raw transcript here.

(for better clarity, the version below is a re-organized and lightly edited chat-transcript.) Participants are welcome to make light edits to their own contributions as they see fit.

-- begin in-session chat-transcript --

[08:09] PeterYim: Welcome to the

= Joint IAOA-OOR-Ontolog "Ontologies and Standards" mini-series session-3 - Tue 2012_07_17 =

Topic: "Standardisation Coordination and Ontology Repositories"

Session Co-chairs: Professor MichaelGruninger (University of Toronto) & Professor JohnBateman (University of Bremen)

Please refer to details on thesession page at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2012_07_17

Can't find Skype Dial pad? ... it's under the "Call" dropdown menu as "Show Dial pad"

Mute / Un-mute: moderator will mute everyone; raise your hand (with "hand button" at lower right of chat window)

if you are in the chat-room as "anonymous", please click on "setting" (button at top center) and change that to your real name in WikiWord format)

Attendees: Duncan Goheen, JohnBateman, JohnGraybeal, KenBaclawski, LeoObrst, MichaelGruninger, MikeDean, NaicongLi, PatCassidy, PeterYim, PierreYvesSchobbens, SteveRay, TerryLongstreth & TomTinsley.

Proceedings
anonymous morphed into TomTinsley

anonymous1 morphed into Duncan Goheen

PeterYim: == MichaelGruninger presenting the opening slides ...

LeoObrst: [continuing from the examples of ontology-related standards efforts cited in MichaelGruninger's presentation] Also, for repositories: ISO/IEC 11179 Metadata Registries.

LeoObrst: OMG has some initiatives: e.g., Semantic Information Modeling for Federation (SIMF) championed by CoryCasanave.

KenBaclawski: I am starting to work with the OASIS standards, and I have some very early experience. I can talk briefly about this.

PeterYim: as an extension from OntologySummit2009 - "Toward Ontology-based Standards" ... there has been some effort (e.g. OASIS ICOM TC / UoM_Ontology_Standard / OASIS QUOMOS TC ) making attempts to drive Standards to be expressed in *both* natural language *and* an ontology language ... would that be another category, or would you consider that as "Standards containing ontologies"?

anonymous morphed into JohnGraybeal

TerryLongstreth: Stretching a little further: ISO 16363 - Audit and certification of trustworthy digital repositories

LeoObrst: There are also some quasi-standards such as UCore-Semantic Layer and Command and Control (C2) Core Ontology, aligned with the XSD-based vocabularies of UCore and C2 Core (a mid-level vocabulary). UCore-SL was developed by both U. Buffalo and MITRE. C2 Core Ontology by U. Buffalo: BarrySmith, Bill Mandrick, etc.

LeoObrst: Also, BillMcCarthy a few years back was promoting an accounting ontology standard. There was an NSF workshop circa 2009-2010, but I don't know current status.

PeterYim: [added subsequently] I believe current efforts of the EDM Council (championed by MikeBennett et al.) is informed by (?may even be in collaboration with) BillMcCarthy's work on the REA accounting ontology.

MichaelGruninger: Perhaps one deliverable for the Committee over the next year can be a document that shows how ontologies and ontological analysis can assist people in developing and evaluating standards. This could be coordinated with the IAOA Education Committee.

SteveRay: You all might be interested in a tool I wrote with a student to validate a smart grid standard. We converted it into OWL, then put it on a cloud as a SPARQL endpoint. See http://fsgim.sv.cmu.edu

PeterYim: @Steve - cool!

anonymous morphed into NaicongLi

TerryLongstreth: @Ken - can you contrast use of ontology to capture meanings about standards transitions, distinct from metadata management approaches?

KenBaclawski: @Terry: I am working on both of them. The hope is that the two can be integrated, but I am treating them independently at the moment.

JohnBateman: @Ken: due to some noise at my end, I couldn't hear what your scripts are working from?

JohnBateman: Application of ontologies in standards at two 'levels': metadata (for management and development, lifecycle issues, etc.) and content data (where ontologies would actually be providing a formal capture of some of the content expressed in the standard). This will require modeling of particular domains and from different perspectives for different communities. When this is in place, then ontologies could be shown (hopefully!) to support and encourage better validation and checking of what the standard is stating. This last then also should overlap synergistically with other work focusing on enriching documents in general with more semantics.

KenBaclawski: The work I am doing at OASIS involves (1) generating OWL (including the various profiles), RDF, XSD, CL, and other formats from the authoritative document that specifies the standard (most commonly a Word document); (2) extracting the metadata for the OASIS standards (status, authors, contributors, versions, etc.); (3) harmonization and mapping between standards. I am automating (1) and (2).

JohnBateman: @Ken: "(1) generating OWL (including the various profiles), RDF, XSD, CL, and other formats from the authoritative document that specifies the standard (most commonly a Word document)"
 * that is very interesting; this overlaps with a whole bunch of work on semantic analysis of plain

text (both free and controlled). It would be interesting to see how you are attempting to do this... since usually (and in general), getting content out of natural text requires more than a 'script'.

KenBaclawski: @John: I am taking advantage of the fact that the standards conform to a particular presentation style. I am not trying to extract the ontology from natural language text.

MichaelGruninger: [things that the IAOA "Standardization Coordination" Comiittee might do] Deliverable 1: What resources and tools can we make available to the standards community to assist them in understanding ontologies and their application

MichaelGruninger: Deliverable 2: wiki that captures ontology-related standards

PeterYim: [ref. Michael's "Deliverable 2" above] The "OntologiesAndStandards" homepage on the wiki is at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologiesAndStandards ... we can start new sections on that page, or start sub-pages and extensions pages from there

PeterYim: there is an upcoming collaborative effort with earth scientists to organize a mini-series on Ontolog, with the kick-off session is scheduled for Thu 2012.08.09

LeoObrst: Yes, this is the NSF EarthCube community effort in geo-sciences.

PeterYim: see the upcoming plans for the Earth Science and Ontology community collaboration - http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?EarthScienceOntolog/GettingOrganized

NaicongLi: The idea of a geek squad has been floating around in the EarthCube semantics/ontology group the idea of having ontology engineering experts helping domain scientists developing domain specific ontologies. Perhaps people in OOR can participate and help

PeterYim: IAOA could/should definitely evangelize the use of ontologies and encourage ontology authors to make them available from some instance of OOR (somewhat akin to "IAOA supported Events")

LeoObrst: There was an activity UoM that came out of the Ontology Summit 2009. I'm not sure where this is yet.

SteveRay: unfortunately, for lack of NIST support, the UoM (as in the OASIS QUOMOS TC) effort is stalled.

JohnBateman: [ref. PatCassidy's remark that, despite modularization efforts, effective integration might still hinge upon a shared foundational ontology] @Pat: sermon 2: modular ontologies moves beyond that Pat, integration is exactly what the effort is on, as Michael said: at the WoMo workshop that is the way to go.

SteveRay: One strong need is for either OOR or IAOA to provide registry services for authoritative URIs for a variety of data types and measured quantities.

KenBaclawski: @Steve: I agree that a URI registry is important. The OOR is a federation and OOR instances are not required to be connected, so it might not be sufficient for providing authoritative URIs. The IAOA could be a way to provide such URIs, perhaps by running a "root" OOR.

LeoObrst: Folks, must go. Thanks!

MichaelGruninger: [potential service 3] Perhaps the role of the IAOA Committee on Ontology Repositories can be to help bring content (i.e. ontologies) to the endeavours such as OOR which are building the ontologies

MichaelGruninger: [potential service 4] This Technical Committee will also serve as liaison among different projects that are developing ontology repositories

PeterYim: for info relating to IAOA committees and the mailing lists and wiki pages supporting them - see: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?IAOA#nid2HWG

PeterYim: very useful session ... Thanks, everyone!

PeterYim: -- session ended: 9:55am PDT --

-- end of in-session chat-transcript --


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Additional Resources:

 * IAOA - http://iaoa.org
 * Joining IAOA - http://iaoa.org/membership/membership.html
 * subscribe to [iaoa-general - IAOA's open mailing list (for both members and non-members)


 * The OpenOntologyRepository Initiative - http://www.oor.net
 * Index page to the various OOR instances - http://oor.net


 * OntologySummit2009 - "Toward Ontology-based Standards"
 * OntologySummit2009_Communique


 * OntologySummit2008 - "Toward An Open Ontology Repository"
 * OntologySummit2008_Communique

For the record ...

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