Leo Obrst, Fabian Neuhaus MITRE, NIST An Open Ontology Repository: Rationale, Expectations & Requirements Session 1 Joint OOR-Ontology Summit 2008 Panel Discussion March 27, 2008 V. 1.20

2 Agenda Information: –Today’s call (March 27, 2008): –Ontology Summit mail list: Look ahead: –Ontology Summit 2008, April 29-30, 2008, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD, USA: Main site: NIST Registration site: Agenda: bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2008/FaceToFaceAgenda –Next week (April 3, 2008): OOR Rationale, Expectations, Requirements 2: –April 7, 2008: Developing an Ontology of Ontologies: Today: –Focus is on potential content providers for such an OOR –Rationale –Expectations –Requirements

3 Rationale Why are we interested in an OOR and what purpose does it serve? Isn’t the Semantic Web notion of distributed islands of semantics sufficient as a de facto repository? –If you put it out there, they will come? –If you build it better and put it out there, they will prefer yours? –History does not show this laissez faire “field of dreams” is good reality So real rationale: –You can find it simply –It’s registered, so you know who built it –It’s got metadata, so you know the purpose, KR language, user group, etc. –It’s got metadata, so you know what the content subject area is –It’s got mappings, so you can connect it to other ontologies –It’s got quality and value, as gauged by recognized criteria –It’s got services, so that you can map and be mapped, can find and be found, can review/certify and be reviewed/certify, can hook your own services into and can use the services others have hooked in –It’s linked to multiple common middle and upper ontologies –It can be easily extended

4 Expectations Will the OOR solve everything? How will we stage our wants and needs? Can we provide good service to end users, content providers, application developers? In particular today, what do content providers expect to find and use? What do content providers expect to be able to provide?

5 Requirements What’s needed: today, tomorrow, next week? What do end users need? What do content providers need? What do application developers need? Architecture Ontology of Ontologies Quality and Gateway Criteria State of the Art OOR the reality: –Requirements -> Design -> Implementation -> Long-term Maintenance & Enhancement –A Technical Roadmap and Realization –How do we ensure long term value, quality, commitment, progress? Towards the Ontology Summit 2008 Communique

6 Panelists William Bug, National Center for Microscopy Imaging Resources (NCMIR) and The Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) –BIRNLex &The NIF Ontology: Decomposing complex semantic domains to empower ontology-driven data federation Evan Wallace, co-Chair of OMG Ontology PSIG, Manufacturing Systems Integration Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) –Thoughts on Hosting an Ontology and Vocabulary Repository at OMG John L. McCarthy, eXtended Meta Data Registry (XMDR), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) –A Standard & Prototype Starting Point for An Open Ontology Repository: The Extended Metadata Registry Project Ken Baclawski, Northeastern University, Neil Sarkar Marine Biological Laboratory –Enhancing Organism Based Disease Knowledge Using Biological Taxonomy, and Environmental Ontologies Peter Benson, Electronic Commerce Code Management Association (ECCMA) –NATO codification system as the foundation for the eOTD, ISO and ISO 8000 Rex Brooks, Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), Integrated Response Service Consortium (IRSC) –Content Provider-Repository Builder