Ontology based data & semantic relationships

Working through a data architecture and strategy for clients recently, I had to compile some information regarding development of the landscape. This information is reflected below.

The primary components to reference are detailed in the included diagram. In this case, the ontology is clearly a piece of the stack, but not the “data” or the single UI.

The ontology is best thought of as a view of an established information set that uses concepts to define relationship. The data is then mapped onto ontology to provide a specific high value view of the data, aiding in the generation of information and knowledge. Clearly there is an assumption that as a precursor to the use of the selected ontology, significant work has gone into the process of cleaning the target data through direct manipulation or a meta data based transformation layer to manage synonym matching, etc. across sources.

Another definition, more succinct is, “Ontologies are computable conceptualisations of a knowledge domain” as defined by Nico Adams, emphasizing the transformation from data to information that can then be further acted upon.

The OWL Web Ontology Language is designed for use by applications that need to process the content of information instead of just presenting information to humans. OWL facilitates greater machine interpretability of Web content than that supported by XML, RDF, and RDF Schema (RDF-S) by providing additional vocabulary along with a formal semantics. OWL has three increasingly-expressive sublanguages: OWL Lite, OWL DL, and OWL Full. Source: http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/

The semantic layer-cake.: (Copyright © 2008 World Wide Web Consortium, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics, Keio University). All Rights Reserved. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal

Useful links :

1. W3 OWL Reference a) http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/
2. Good article on Ontology implementation a) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T64-4GMB0F0-F&_user=358874&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000017638&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=358874&md5=4b5c6decc4b2f01fad8183b00aec72b1
3. 3) DDI - An Ontology for Drug Discovery Investigations a) http://users.aber.ac.uk/ddq/ddi/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
4. Open BioMedical Ontologies a) http://www.obofoundry.org/crit.shtml
5. OWL ontology browser a) http://pellet.owldl.com/ontology-browser/
6. OBO Ontology Download Matrix a) http://www.berkeleybop.org/ontologies/
7. Semantic Chemistry a) http://www.semanticuniverse.com/articles-semantic-chemistry.html

Reference:Stephen P. Gardner, Ontologies and semantic data integration, Drug Discovery Today, Volume 10, Issue 14, 15 July 2005, Pages 1001-1007, ISSN 1359-6446, DOI: 10.1016/S1359-6446(05)03504-X.(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6T64-4GMB0F0-F/2/f296f93f44347cfd561668ede72ac5f9)

Nico Adams, Semantic Chemistry http://www.semanticuniverse.com/articles-semantic-chemistry.html

More to come...