Re: Draft list of ucd-words

From: Frederic V. Hessman <hessman-at-Astro.physik.Uni-Goettingen.DE>
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 08:13:22 +0200


>> The way to extend a robust UCD process into the future is to provide
>> an explicit namespace mechanism from the start. This will allow
>> capturing controversial or peripheral identifiers such as VOConcept,
>> but will also allow us to wipe the etch-a-sketch clean with new
>> version(s) of subject dependent list(s) of UCDs. If later we decide
>> that v1:pos.earth.height should indeed have been
>> v2:pos.earth.altitude, there needs to be a lightweight way to make
>> the transition.
>
> Hear, hear. One of the other GO maxims -- up there with `involve the
> users' -- was `version the ontology'. It seems the GO is in
> more-or-less continuous flux, but this simply doesn't matter, because
> they recognised at the outset that they were going to have to do this,
> and so designed their formalism and tools to cope/help with it.

(back on-line after a painful move of our entire institute)

I confess that even I can see the advantages of this in principle - and I was the most vociferous complainer about opaque UCD's. However, I'm not crazy about numbering the concepts - yet another layer of naming, this time utterly random in
appearance - and I'm not quite sure how versioning is going to function in practice. On the other hand, if GO works, then what can one say?

Rick



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Dr. Frederic V. Hessman     Hessman-at-Astro.physik.Uni-Goettingen.DE
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Received on 2005-06-30Z08:10:57