1. A Rose by Any Other Name is Still
a Rose
Robert Stevens
BioHealth Informatics Group
School of Computer Science
University of Manchester
Robert.stevens@manchester.ac.uk
2. Ontology Building
The social problems outweigh the technical
Do you really need an ontology?
Be open
People wil be hurt--compromise
Scope and requirements
Lessons from software engineering
3. Issues in Ontology Building
► Complexity and scope
► Cost models
► The economics of ontology building
► Versioning
► Communication!
► Not encoding
► Semantics of annotations
4. Definitions not Names
► People love their terminology
► Neoplasm
► Do leaves exist?
► It is easier to agree on definitions than words
► Concepts and their labels are not the same thing
► A rose by any other name is still a rose
5. Counsels of Despair
► It must be a formal ontology…
► …even when you need a thesaurus, classification
scheme, vocabulary etc.
► All users can deal with one view of one ontology
► Separate users views and knowledge views
► Complete descriptions of reality are an impossible
goal; you’re processing information not reality
6. Counsels of Despair
► It must be a formal ontology…
► …even when you need a thesaurus, classification
scheme, vocabulary etc.
► All users can deal with one view of one ontology
► Separate users views and knowledge views
► Complete descriptions of reality are an impossible
goal; you’re processing information not reality