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OpenOntologyRepository: "OOR for Big Data" Workshop-I - Tue 2012_08_14

Topic: "OOR for Big Data" - Brainstorm Session

Session Chair: MikeDean (OOR; Raytheon-BBN)

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Conference Call Details

  • Date: Tuesday, 14-Aug-2012
  • Start Time: 8:30am PDT / 11:30am EDT / 5:30pm CEST / 15:30 UTC
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Agenda Ideas

please insert any additional items below (along with your name for follow-up purposes)

Abstract

Topic: "OOR for Big Data" - Brainstorm Session

This is a following up session from the presentation our team made on the case of "Leveraging OOR in Big Open Data" at the virtual panel session on ConferenceCall_2012_05_17.

We will use this workshop to strategize and brainstorm on how we should approach this very important initiative going forward.

The plan for this session is to use the time of this session as fairly open discussion about use of OOR for Big Data. There will not be formal presentations (we are still a bit early for that). The chair will try to seed some discussion topics.

Agenda

Topic: "OOR for Big Data" - Brainstorm Session

  • Session Format: this is a virtual session conducted over an augmented conference call
  • 1. Opening - chair ... [ slides ]
  • 1.1 participants self-introduction (if the number of participants is less than 20) [max 0.5 min. each]
  • 2. Framing the issues - chair
  • 3. Q & A and open discussion [ All ] -- please refer to process above
  • 4. Any other business (possibly move this up, and get it done with first)
  • 5. Summary / Next steps / Announcements - (chair)

Proceedings

Please refer to the above

IM Chat Transcript captured during the session

see raw transcript here.

(for better clarity, the version below is a re-organized and lightly edited chat-transcript.)

Participants are welcome to make light edits to their own contributions as they see fit.

-- begin in-session chat-transcript --

[08:22] Peter P. Yim: Welcome to the

"OOR for Big Data" Workshop-I - Tue 2012_08_14

Topic: "OOR for Big Data" Brainstorm Session

Session Chair: Mike Dean (OOR; Raytheon-BBN)

Session page: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OOR/ConferenceCall_2012_08_14

Mute control: *7 to un-mute ... *6 to mute

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Proceedings:

[08:37] Peter P. Yim: == Mike Dean starting the session off with his intro slides ...

[08:41] Todd Schneider: [ref. Mike's slides #4 & 5] How do these supporting technologies fit into

overall IT/data architectures?

[08:47] Peter P. Yim: == Q&A and Open Discussion ...

[08:48] anonymous morphed into Elizabeth Florescu

[08:49] Terry Longstreth: Mike mentioned RDF from SQL productions; Terry asked if that included

capturing the logic from constraints, triggers (Mike added views).

[08:51] Mike Bennett: How do you manage the relationship between the logical data model which

corresponds to the (e.g. SQL) data source, and the ontology of the domain. How do we distinguish an

ontology which is an RDF model of a data model design, versus an ontology of the real things?

[08:53] Mike Bennett: That is, how to formalize the model theoretic relationship between the elements

in the RDF model, and the things which they represent (data elements v things).

[08:54] Peter P. Yim: our opportunity (and challenge, of course) could be in: taking where the Linked

Data people leave off (say, having extracted a vocabulary on the dataset) and come up with the

ontology and the value added services that OOR is poised to provide ... of course, we should look at

starting from the dataset as well (not just from the vocabulary)

[08:58] Mike Bennett: Suggestion: in extracting information from large datasets, is there a role for

an "Ontology of the data" and a clear way of distinguishing this from the ontology of the subject

matter itself?

[09:01] Michael Grüninger: @MikeBennett: Do you see a role for an "ontology of the data"? What kinds

of concepts and relations do you see in such an ontology? Would it be domain-independent?

[09:04] Mike Bennett: This is what I'm wondering. It's all too easy for someone to take a logical

model (which has been designed, rightly), converting it into RDF/OWL and saying "Lo, an ontology". I

think there must be a role for it in data extraction, but also a clear difference to ontologies of

the subject matter. With perhaps an RDF/OWL mapping ontology between the two?

[09:06] Mike Bennett: @Michael PS I suspect that the basic concepts such a model would be built from,

i.e. the top level classes, might be the constructs that exist in the data modeling language, e.g.

data table, join table, UML class, UML attribute and so on? I don't know, I'm still ruminating on

this.

[09:03] Peter P. Yim: candidate data that we might get our hands on and communities we can collaborate

with are probably in the domains of: (i) government data; (ii) geospatial / geo-science; (iii)

biomedical (iv) standards

[09:05] Peter P. Yim: a mini-series is coming up shortly - see:

http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?EarthScienceOntolog ... the kick-off session for the series

is coming up next week (Thu 2012.08.23)

[09:06] Terry Longstreth: Big data characterized by Size, by Complexity, by SxC?

[09:08] Terry Longstreth: A characteristic of big systems is the fuzziness of the boundaries; does

the same hold for big data?

[09:10] Todd Schneider: Ken, when the phrase 'big data' is used I haven't seen qualification to the

number of sources. Perhaps there's an implicit assumption of a single source.

[09:11] Ken Baclawski: When we talk about Big Data and OOR, there are two different problems: a

relatively small number of large complex ontologies (as in BioPortal which has ontologies with

millions of concepts) or a very large number (on the order of millions) of relatively simple

ontologies (e.g., the fields of a CSV file).

[09:19] Todd Schneider: Ken, Okay there may be performance issues when the number of ontologies

becomes large.

[09:18] Terry Longstreth: Challenge for OOR would seem to be more towards complexity rather than size

of a Big Data environment

[09:20] Mike Bennett: Open linked data marketing issue: so all these governments that are putting out

RDF linked data on the basis of the benefits of semantics: are they aware of the available

ontologies (per OOR) so that they start to use existing ontologies as the conceptual model from

which to structure new and future open linked data outputs.

[09:20] Mike Bennett: This also requires an awareness of the role of an ontology AS a conceptual

model - many folks are simply not aware of basic top down modeling best practice.

[09:22] Michael Grüninger: Two different kinds of applications of OOR: 1) using ontologies within OOR

together with existing data sets e.g. integration, decision support. 2) using ontologies within OOR

to design new data sets or redesign existing data sets

[09:27] Mike Dean: As part of "moving to the cloud", many organizations are moving from relational

databases to map/reduce frameworks such as Hadoop. Can ontologies be used to assist with or guide

such migration?

[09:30] Todd Schneider: Have to go. Cheers.

[09:37] Ken Baclawski: Big Data also involves format conversion issues as well as semantics

(e.g., integer vs floating point, image formats).

[09:39] Mike Bennett: OOR: would not include metadata about data formats (how could it?) but there is

a role for some demonstration of description of how to use this stuff, as part of the usage of OOR

in that scenario.

[09:39] Ken Baclawski: Clarify these terms: data registry, data repository, ontology registry,

ontology repository.

[09:40] Mike Bennett: Also clarify how these different moving parts may be framed in terms of the

Zachman Framework or some similar formal development framework.

[09:40] Terry Longstreth: The loss of meaning in data conversions should be part of the ontology

[09:41] Terry Longstreth: ...perhaps a separate micro-theory about data formats and lossy vs.

lossless conversions

[09:44] Mike Bennett: Incompatible data sources: what ontologies are for.

[09:47] Mike Dean: http://icpsr.umich.edu is a large repository of social science data

[09:47] Ken Baclawski: I suggest as an action item: capture the use cases we just identified.

[09:48] Mike Dean: Most domains/projects seem to have their own data registries

[09:58] Terry Longstreth: Are we agreed that Big Data for OOR is primarily an issue of complexity of

the target relationships?

[10:00] Terry Longstreth: Apparently no consensus yet

[10:01] Mike Bennett: Or is it "Data that is Big" v "Big data architecture" i.e. Hadoop / Mapreduce.

Both seemed relevant according to today's conversation.

[10:04] Peter P. Yim: as long as we are not arguing about what "Big Data" is ... and we know our

objective is to tackle how OOR can "serve" Big Data, I think we are fine (at least for now; until we

need to tackle at finer granularity)

[10:12] Peter P. Yim: assuming we have consensus on putting a focus on "OOR for Big Data" (along with

what we have been doing so far with OOR), we might want to: (a) identify the data, use case(s) and

one or two community(ies) we want to work closely with, to take this effort to the next level, (b)

figure out what we need to be doing differently (from this point onwards) for OOR

[10:21] Peter P. Yim: Following event dates confirmed

(ref. http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OOR/ConferenceCall_2012_08_07#nid3DJ5 ... and other events already scheduled)

(... incorporating consensus arrived with email exchanges after the session as well)

  • OOR Funding-I - Chair: Ken Baclawski - "rethink strategy" - Tue 2012_08_21
  • No meeting on Tue 2012_08_28
  • OOR regular monthly team meeting - Tue 2012.09.04
  • No meeting on Tue 2012_09_25
  • No meeting on Tue 2012_10_02
  • OOR regular monthly team meeting - Tue 2012.10.09
  • OOR Metadata Workshop-VIII - Chair: Michael Grüninger - will do "Mapping" and/or "metadata in OOR for Big Data" - Tue 2012_10_16
  • OOR Code Development-IX - Chair: Mike Dean - Tue 2012_10_23
  • OOR Infrastructure-II - Chair: Peter P. Yim - tba (will schedule this later; possibly after

the next major release of the BioPortal vm appliance)

[10:04] Peter P. Yim: great session!

[10:05] Peter P. Yim: -- session ended: 10:03am PDT --

-- end of in-session chat-transcript --

  • Further Question & Remarks - please post them to the [ oor-forum ] listserv
    • all subscribers to the previous summit discussion, and all who responded to today's call will automatically be subscribed to the [ oor-forum ] listserv
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  • Next Meetings:
    • Tying down event dates for ref.
      • OOR Architecture & API Workshop-XIII - Co-chairs: Ken Baclawski & Todd Schneider - "use cases" - Tue 2012_09_11
      • OOR Metadata Workshop-VIII - Chair: Michael Grüninger - will do "Mapping" and/or "metadata in OOR for Big Data" - Tue 2012_09_25
      • OOR Funding-I - Chair: Ken Baclawski - "rethink strategy" - Tue 2012_08_21 (MikeBennett voiced his preference for 8/21; most people are ok with either dates.)
      • OOR Code Development-IX - Chair: Mike Dean - Tue 2012_09_16
      • OOR Infrastructure-II - Chair: Peter P. Yim - tba
    • No meeting on Tue 2012_08_28

Additional Resources

  • Our "Leveraging OOR in Big Open Data" presentation at the virtual panel session on ConferenceCall_2012_05_17

For the record ...

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