Term and Label Re-use amongst Glossaries.. Taxonomies...assets and ontologies

[Simon Opper]

Hi folks

I'm looking to sanity check my understanding of the re-use of terms between taxonomies, glossaries, other assets and ontologies in EDG.

If I understand the EDG documentation correctly:

• glossary terms can trace to other terms via the "traces to" property - ok and have this working
• glossary terms can be mapped to another data asset type by the "maps to term" property - ok and have this working

But I'm unclear on how to re-use glossary terms (in a bidirectional) way with taxonomy.

• adding a taxonomy to the includes of a glossary doesn't bring the concepts in.
• adding a glossary to the includes of a taxonomy also doesn't bring in terms in the opposite direction.

I'm guessing a result of the import rules between the two model ontologies.

Sure, the taxonomy can be exported as a spreadsheet and imported into a glossary but this seems against the grain and disconnects the two assets.

1. So.... is there a recommended approach or workflow to develop glossary, taxa and other asset types ?  e.g. begin at glossary, add some shapes??, import/include to taxonomy and then consume in other assets 
2. Is there a direct way extract/annotate/use shapes/magic properties/transform taxa and glossaries to inter-operate with each other ?

Finally, regarding ontologies and asserting classes as skos concepts I've done some reading, gone down the rabbit hole and come back out with the understanding that avoid to messy and un-intended entailment issues this type of assertion is to be avoided.

So leaving class and skos assertions behind:

3. how then does one re-use the labels from a glossary or taxonomy when developing ontologies ? It seems manual to me so far unless I'm missing something.

4.Can existing taxa or gloss labels be made available to pick at the time of ontology class, property and attribute creation ?

Once an ontology is created, I assume but haven't got on to testing, that cross walks and/or EDG search can perform some entity matching and recommendation. Hence hopefully close the loop back to gloss or taxa terms. Is this right ?

Many thanks in advance !

Simon

[Irene Polikoff]

Hi Simon

On May 16, 2019, at 3:01 AM, Simon Opper <simon...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi folks

I'm looking to sanity check my understanding of the re-use of terms between taxonomies, glossaries, other assets and ontologies in EDG.

If I understand the EDG documentation correctly:

• glossary terms can trace to other terms via the "traces to" property - ok and have this working
• glossary terms can be mapped to another data asset type by the "maps to term" property - ok and have this working

Glossary terms can also be connected to each other using skos:broader, skos:related and a few other properties.

But I'm unclear on how to re-use glossary terms (in a bidirectional) way with taxonomy.

• adding a taxonomy to the includes of a glossary doesn't bring the concepts in.
• adding a glossary to the includes of a taxonomy also doesn't bring in terms in the opposite direction.

Typically, users using taxonomies would not use glossaries and vice versa. Taxonomies make a stricter user of SKOS including support (even requirement) for SKOS Concept Schemes and various constraints that are described in SKOS. They tend to be used mostly by people that work with unstructured information, content management, librarians, etc. Glossaries are tend to be used by people in the structured information management space - cataloging data sources, defining terms and connecting them to physical or logical data elements. EDG defines a number of properties for the terms that are not part of the SKOS vocabulary, but are commonly used by stakeholders working with business glossaries. And, of course, you can add your own properties. Glossary terms can be organized hierarchically, so in that sense, glossaries can also be taxonomies. The primary UI for working with them is tabular, but you could switch into a hierarchical view. With taxonomies, the primary UI is hierarchical, but tabular view is also possible.

It is possible though that some users would want to work with both taxonomies and business glossaries and would want to combine a taxonomy and a glossary. We left it up to users who want to do so to define the connections they would want to use.

In EDG, when you include one asset collection (graph) into another, all included resources are there. You may not see them in the UI because of how UI is targeted, but they are there. For each collection type, there is a “main class” (the root of the asset type navigation) and the UI is targeted to work with instances of that class and their subclasses.

I'm guessing a result of the import rules between the two model ontologies.

See above.

Sure, the taxonomy can be exported as a spreadsheet and imported into a glossary but this seems against the grain and disconnects the two assets.

1. So.... is there a recommended approach or workflow to develop glossary, taxa and other asset types ?  e.g. begin at glossary, add some shapes??, import/include to taxonomy and then consume in other assets 
2. Is there a direct way extract/annotate/use shapes/magic properties/transform taxa and glossaries to inter-operate with each other ?

There is no declared subclass relationship between edg:GlossaryTerm and skos:Concept. You could add one and then you will see terms when you are in a taxonomy in EDG. Additionally or alternatively, you could also add a subclass relationship from skos:Concept to edg:GlossaryTerm although I am somewhat less likely to recommend it. 

You could also adjust the way information is presented in the glossaries (change the root of the asset type navigation) so that it starts with skos:Concept. 

Finally, you could add transformation rules that create {?s a edg:GlossaryTerm} statements if there is {?s a skos:Concept} statement. 

It is up to you to choose the approach that will best support your intended use cases.

Finally, regarding ontologies and asserting classes as skos concepts I've done some reading, gone down the rabbit hole and come back out with the understanding that avoid to messy and un-intended entailment issues this type of assertion is to be avoided.

Fully agree.

So leaving class and skos assertions behind:

3. how then does one re-use the labels from a glossary or taxonomy when developing ontologies ? It seems manual to me so far unless I'm missing something.

4.Can existing taxa or gloss labels be made available to pick at the time of ontology class, property and attribute creation ?

I would recommend the following:

1. Create 2 properties: one to indicate that a concept/term should be used to make a class with the same name, one to indicate that a concept/term should be used to make a property with the same name

2. Annotate your taxonomy or glossary populating these properties

3. Create an ontology (or use an existing one) and define transformation rules to create a class or a property with the same name as annotated concepts/terms. Add any other logic you want to use e.g., create rdfs:subClassOf relationship between classes if you see skos:broader between their namesake concepts, build some kind of tracing relationship between classes/properties and their namesake concepts, etc.

I do not think that the idea of selecting a concept when creating a class instead of typing a label is a particularly usable one. However, if you want to do so, you could overwrite a create dialog to implement this. Take a look at the Development Guide for how to overwrite create dialog with your custom logic.

Once an ontology is created, I assume but haven't got on to testing, that cross walks and/or EDG search can perform some entity matching and recommendation. Hence hopefully close the loop back to gloss or taxa terms. Is this right ?

If you have an ontology and a taxonomy that contain resources with similar names (labels) and you want to establish some links between them, yes, crosswalks would help you do this.

Many thanks in advance !

Simon

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[Simon Opper]

Thanks very much for your advice Irene.

My feeling is that non-technical SMEs favour to work on flat vocab/term lists in glossary and introducing even a simple taxonomy and minimal skos concepts weeds out many people, placing the job of hierarchical taxonomy development more with technical users and a knowledge architect to bring it together. This use case was what was driving me to be able to easily work with non-tech users in a glossary but then pull it into more structured assets over time with maximum re-use out of the box. Your simple suggestions help me do that. 

Cheers

Simon

[Irene Polikoff]

Business terms in a glossary are typically expected to be mapped to some logical or physical data elements. The use case is to create some common set of business definitions (e.g., customer ID) and connect them to data sources that store customer IDs and, more specifically to the data elements in the source that store them. 

Further, business glossaries typically capture business rules about these assets e.g., customer ID is always 9 characters, etc. And other information that applies to data mapped to the term irrespective of where is stored. For example, the fact that email addresses are personally identifiable information, that certain regulations apply to data that corresponds to the term, etc. 

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[Simon Opper]

Thanks Irene !

Simon

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