[MOBY-l] OWL-S, and RDF ontology for MOBY?

[Frank Gibbons]

Hey MOBYers,

Couple of ideas for MOBY-S, wanted to throw them out there, see if they 
make any sense....

1. OWL-S is (as I understand it) an extension of OWL to web services, 
enabling discovery and machine-machine negotiation of web services (that's 
the "-S" in OWL-S). Since OWL-S is RDF, and MOBY Central already produces 
RDF graphs as part of the registration process, it's really a question of 
making the RDF graphs OWL-S compatible. Is that something that's part of 
the plan for the ongoing re-write of MOBY-S? (Why not)? I realise that 
OWL-S is evolving, so it might not be mature enough for use yet, but 
perhaps there are other reasons why it wouldn't be a good idea?

2. I've been playing with extending the MOBY-S object ontology, and talking 
with the BioPAX people about how they propose to integrate other ontologies 
into theirs, so that we might do the same. A month ago, at ISMB, it sounded 
like they were planning to import the PSI-MI ontology (for example) 
wholesale, and integrate it into theirs. Subsequent changes to PSI-MI would 
require manual inclusion. MOBY's ontology works in a similar way: in order 
to use PSI-MI, I've had to register each object separately. From this, and 
some reading I've been doing, it seems like the best way (and certainly the 
Semantic Way) to extend the ontology would be to have it be RDF-based, so 
that extension would involve simply including the URI of the ontology we 
wish to include. In this way, any subsequent changes in the included 
ontology are automatically included in MOBY's. How practical would it be to 
use this method in MOBY-S? Presumably, that's what S-MOBY does - Gary?

Feedback appreciated,

-Frank


PhD, Computational Biologist,
Harvard Medical School BCMP/SGM-322, 250 Longwood Ave, Boston MA 02115, USA.
Tel: 617-432-3555       Fax: 
617-432-3557       http://llama.med.harvard.edu/~fgibbons