Chapter 1: Foundations - KGConf/BookClub-OntologyEngineering GitHub Wiki

Questions

Matthias Sesboüé : (feel free to push back some questions to a specific chapter session)

  • I feel like "knowledge engineering" and all the related trendy names (e.g. ontology engineering) are used any time there is some domain data represented using a graph, not necessarily including the formal logic part. Is this only an impression? Is it what you mean by an "application-focused" ontology?
  • Could you give more detail about the difference between a conceptual ontology and an application-focused one? (section 1.1, page 3, last paragraph)
  • Section 1.3, second paragraph, page 5, you mention "ontologies can be used to improve search accuracy through query expansion to clarify search context". Could you give some example of how? (synonyms expansion for instance?)
  • At the end of section 1.3, page 6, could you give more details about each use cases?
    • How are the ontologies used in each use case?
    • Which part of the system are they used to enhance?
    • What are the differences in design for each use cases?

Meeting Minutes

Notes :

  • Knowledge Engineering (in the sense taken in this book) have some kind of logic
  • The application-focused ontology refers to the fact that you should scope your ontology and make sure you know which question(s) you are trying to answer and that you are actually answering them.
  • A "domain ontology" might be more general than an "industry ontology" which might be more business-focused. Though you might not need to make that distinction.
  • Hw it the ontology is used is very important to define how to build it.

Other questions and answers:

  • What would you say is the best tech/platform to use to build an ontology?
    • Elisa Kendall: That depends :). Lots of people are using Protégé, which is decent for OWL ontologies, but not great if you have lots of ontologies that you are working with and need to integrate them. It's one of the best tools for adding logic, though. Top Braid and MOBI are also fairly widely used - Top Braid is very good at dealing with multiple ontologies and putting revisions in the right namespace, for example, and has good support for SHACL, which is not as well supported in Protégé, but it doesn't have as much reasoning support.