[MOBY-dev] Cleaning up the Object ontology - Inheriting from base Object

[Mark Wilkinson]

Hi again, 

On a related note:

There are obviously other "rubbish" entities in the Object ontology, and
I will not feel guilty for removing those either.  However, just as in
the service instance registry, there are some Objects in the ontology
that are not "rubbish", but do not reflect best-practices (yes, I
know... this has to be defined somewhere in writing, and it is not at
the moment...).

Martin, Richard and I had a (heated :-) ) discussion about one of these
"best practices" over Christmas, and I don't think we came to a
resolution, so I don't want to take any preemptive action.  I'd prefer
to have the discussion in the open community such that (a) we all learn
a little bit about the various ways that MOBY can be used/mis-used, and
(b) so that we can, as a community, decide what the definition of "mis-
used" is going be.

Here is my position statement - please feel free to attack it or support
it:

Statement:  Any Object that is registered as deriving from base Object,
without any HAS or HASA relationships, should be considered invalid.

Rationale:  Base "Object" is used exclusively for passing identifiers.
Extending base Object, without making it more complex, can only (IMO)
indicate that you are attempting to create a specific type of identifier
container.  This is the role of the Namespace (the Namespace ontology
being a list of types of identifiers, and their meanings).  It is
incorrect use of the Object (syntax) ontology to imply that a given
Syntax is specific to a particular type of identifier.  The Object and
Namespace ontologies are mutually exclusive.

My proposal:  The Registry should trap attempts to register Objects that
derive from base Object without any additional syntactic complexity, and
refuse to register them.


Thoughts?

M


-- 
--
...his last words were 'Hey guys!  Watch this!'
--
Mark Wilkinson
Asst. Professor
Dept. of Medical Genetics
University of British Columbia
PI in Bioinformatics
iCAPTURE Centre
St. Paul's Hospital
Rm. 166, 1081 Burrard St.
Vancouver, BC, V6Z 1Y6
tel: 604 682 2344 x62129
fax: 604 806 9274

"For most of this century we have viewed communications as a conduit, 
       a pipe between physical locations on the planet. 
What's happened now is that the conduit has become so big and interesting 
      that communication has become more than a conduit, 
       it has become a destination in its own right..."

                Paul Saffo - Director, Institute for the Future