|
|
|
|
|
Glossary
Annotations
Generally, annotations are additional explanations, which can refer to whole texts as well as to single keywords or concepts. Within Ontoverse, a system for annotations will allow users to add comments regarding the ontology and its structure, which supports the communication within the user community. On the other hand, ontologies or rather their concepts can be added to texts as annotations (that would be the case in a semantic web).
Grid (grid-technology, grid-computing)
The term grid-technology sums up all methods, which enable the (simultaneous) distribution of process execution within a computer network. This technology offers cost-efficient solutions for large-scale computational problems in virtual networks.
Information Retrieval (IR)
Information Retrieval is the process of searching and finding information, e. g. in special data bases or with internet search engines on the World Wide Web. Normally the point is to retrieve documents within document collections, so that document retrieval can be regarded as the most popular aspect of information retrieval. Different retrieval systems have been developed for different retrieval needs; new algorithms are being tested for improving the quality of search results.
Information Extraction (IE)
Information extraction (IE) aims at automatically acquiring information from electronic, unstructured texts. Therefore special IE systems are being developed that can "read" domain-specific, unstructured texts and extract structured data from them. Therefore a format for relevant data has to be defined. This is normally done by specifying templates, which then will be filled with attributes during the IE process.
Knowledge-on-Demand
The phrase knowledge-on-demand is used to describe systems and methods, which help to easily and rapidly access existing knowledge and information. One example is the demand of knowledge from extern knowledge sources like data bases.
Corpus (text corpus)
A collection of texts, which have been arranged and formatted for examination purposes, is called corpus. Within Ontoverse one such corpus (or several corpora) consisting of scientific literature from relevant research fields will be built up. It can then be used for linguistic analysis.
Life Science
Life Science is a collective term for all sciences concerned with life in all its variations, especially Biology and Medicine and their sub-disciplines.
Merging (Ontology-Merging)
Merging is the process of melting two single ontologies or sub-ontologies into one new ontology. This process aims at generating a new consistent ontology from former isolated ontologies. Special merging programs are being developed for this purpose.
Ontology
Ontologies in terms of knowledge representation are systems of concepts and their relations representing a defined domain of knowledge. Additionally, axioms and formal logic can be integrated. Therefore special ontology languages are being developed as well as editors and other tools supporting the construction and use of ontologies.
Ontologies are the core of Ontoverse. A user community will be enabled to use them for knowledge management, information retrieval and also for finding a shared view on a defined domain of interest. This also means that the users will be enabled to build and edit ontologies together in a wiki.
Ontology Language
For the construction of ontologies formal representation languages are needed, that can capture and express the concepts of an ontology, their properties and relations as well as additional constraints. Their expressiveness can be more or less complex, e. g. frame-based and logic-based languages are distinguished. In Ontoverse the Web Ontology Language (OWL) will be applied.
OWL (= Web Ontology Language)
The Web Ontology Language (OWL) is a formal description language, an ontology language. It has been developed by the Web Ontology Working Group of the W3C Semantic Web Activity. Currently there are three versions of different complexity available: OWL Lite, OWL DL and OWL Full.
Reasoner (Description Logic Reasoner, Inference Machine)
Some ontology languages use description logics to represent formal semantics of natural languages. Reasoners also know these logics and thus can check on logical consequences. They are mainly used to check whether concepts within one ontology or several connected ontologies are consistent. Reasoners can also detect and picture indirect relations within ontologies.
Semantic Web
The phrase semantic web was coined by Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. It describes the idea to extend present websites by adding machine-readable data, which represent the semantics of the content. Therefore websites might be annotated with ontologies. The vision of a semantic web is not yet realized, first approaches are arising.
Thesaurus
A thesaurus in terms of knowledge representation is a collection of concepts for a defined domain of knowledge, which is structured by certain relations. Thus thesauri are closely related to ontologies; often they are regarded as a limited or less formal kind of ontology. The concepts of a thesaurus are mainly connected by hierarchical relations (by defining broader terms and narrower terms) or described as synonyms or near synonyms (called related terms). Furthermore, a general relation of associativity can be used to connect terms, but it is not possible, to specify and define this kind of relation in detail - as you can do for an ontology. Furthermore compared to an ontology a thesaurus cannot use logics or axioms. Within Ontoverse it might be useful to also check existing thesauri in the life science domain on whether they can be of use in the ontology-development process.
Wiki
Wikis are page-collections which are openly accessible on the internet and which users cannot only read but also change by themselves online. In Ontoverse this wiki-principle of cooperative work will be applied to ontologies instead of texts.
|
|
|
