[DAS] Re: Our identifier doc and proposal

[Chris Mungall]

On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Ewan Birney wrote:

> On Wed, 28 Nov 2001, Lincoln Stein wrote:
> 
> > I think we're going to find that the features form a DAG and not a
> > hierarchy.  Otherwise you're going to have problems classifying things
> > like "genes".  In the context of genetics, a gene is a type of
> > complementation group.  In the context of genomics, a gene is a
> > subclass of transcription features, translation features, and
> > regulatory features.
> > 
> 
> 
> Bugger. 
> 
> You are right. I'm glad you are going to sort out how to have an
> extensible distributed DAG system that is easy to use. ;)

Thankfully it's already been done - cf semantic web, RDF(S), DAML+OIL etc

The nice thing about this is if someone doesn't like "ontology
politburo"'s classes, they can add in their own.

Two people can develop their own similar class hierarchies without
speaking to one another, and a third person can provide equivalence
relationships mapping between the concepts; or logical rules for inferring
one from the other. 

the DAGs can be as complex as you like, giving computable semantics for
terms like "tRNA" or just a flat vocabulary, whatever you like.
Complements DAS beautifully.

All designed to be anarchic and distributed and not an OMG committee in
sight

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