On Apr 27, 2005, at 9:16 AM, Matthew Graham wrote:
> One alternative, though I do not know how practically viable it would
> be at present, is to use the astronomy ontology that Ed Shaya at
> University of Maryland is developing and presented a poster about at
> last year's ADASS.
I didn't want to muddy the waters by bringing up the "O" word. Google "Shaya astronomy ontology" for lots of hits on this. My visceral reaction to discussions over the last couple of years as well as the last couple of days is similar. A noble effort - so large and grand that pragmatic functioning systems can't possibly rely on the results in any strong sense. I also have a deep skepticism that practicing astronomers will embrace the results. Noble nonetheless and worthy of the best efforts that the VO can spare.
On the other hand, VOEvent will amount to nothing if it is not rigorously pragmatic. I don't think that "pragmatic" and "ontology" are incompatible - and VOEvent provides a great test case for demonstrating this. We need to describe only certain astronomical processes/objects - the ones with a time varying nature. Our list should be biased by an artful sense of where the productive science lies - start with shadings of GRBs, SNs, solar system objects - and some variations on grab bag categories of "other" or "none of the above" or even "all of the above". Establish a process for adding to the list. And don't get too torqued up about "technical correctness".
Rob Seaman
NOAO
Received on 2005-04-27Z17:04:38