Re: Browsing Ontologies
Tom Gruber <gruber@HPP.Stanford.EDU>
Message-id: <199408262029.NAA04432@HPP.Stanford.EDU>
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Date: Fri, 26 Aug 1994 13:31:48 -0800
To: mikega@aciinfo1.zfe.siemens.de (Mike Gassmann),
ontolingua@HPP.Stanford.EDU
From: Tom Gruber <gruber@HPP.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: Browsing Ontologies
At 2:54 PM 8/26/94 +0200, Mike Gassmann wrote:
>Hi!
>In a workshop we discussed the abbilities of Ontolingua.
>We stopped at the point we want to browse Ontologies, manipulate the database
>and see the effects on the system.
Why stop there? The ontology library has tons of examples, heavily indexed
for easy browsing on the World Wide Web at
http://ksl-web.stanford.edu/knowledge-sharing/ontologies/
Even the introductory documents are linked into the formal ontologies using
hyperlinks.
>Are there any design-tools or guides expect the reference-manual to design
>ontologies on my own?
Not enough, that's for sure. There are some groups working on editing
tools, and I hope they will be at a stage to announce them soon. I refer
students to the ontologies in the library as exemplars to get started. One
thing we've learned in the past few years: ontologies need to be designed
for shareability -- it doesn't follow from just doing a good job at
philosophy ("design for truth") or making it work for an application
("design for operationality").
>Are there any papers about it?
I have written two papers on the subject. One a proposal of some
evaluation criteria for ontology design, with two case studies. The other
is an in-depth presentation of a familiy of ontologies with discussions of
some engineering strategies for design-for-shareability.
They are also on the web, at
http://ksl-web.stanford.edu/knowledge-sharing/papers/README.html@onto-design
http://ksl-web.stanford.edu/knowledge-sharing/papers/README.html@engmath
We hope to have some more papers, from around the world, on this subject in
the library soon.
>Are there papers about advantages from Ontolingua vs. e.g. C++ or so?
Ontolingua and C++ are very different beasts; comparing them would be like
comparing an architect's blueprint with a brand of concrete. Ontolingua is
for _specification_ of ontologies; it can translate the specifications into
some _representation_ languages. C++ is a programming language that is
especially bad at knowledge representation.
The closest thing to C++ is CLIPS, a C-based production rule system with a
simple object-oriented data structure facility that people have used for
knowledge representation. Ontolingua can translate KIF into CLIPS, and the
CLIPS files can be loaded into C programs. There are agents at Stanford
that load in the CLIPS files to get the class hierarchy of ontologies into
the programs.
Thanks for your questions. I hope that ontolingua can play some part in
specifying knowledge sharing agreements in your project.
tom