Re: UIMA type systems and OWL ontologies

[Adam Lally <al...@alum.rpi.edu>]

On 9/21/07, Thomas Francart <th...@mondeca.com> wrote:
>  Defining a type system in UIMA looks very much like defining an (simple)
> OWL ontology (http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref/). I was just wondering if there
> have been any effort into developping something that could make a connection
> between a UIMA type system and an OWL ontology ? (like generating OWL from a
> type system or vice versa)
>
>  I can see a couple of advantages to this :
>
>      - Users defining their type systems could instead define an ontology
> using existing visual editors like protégé or swoop
>      - OWL adds a lot more constraints than a UIMA type system - these
> constraints need be completely implemented in UIMA, but at least some simple
> ones, like cardinalities
>      - OWL uses RDF datatypes (String, booleans, times, etc.) onto which
> UIMA could build, instead of redefining its own datatypes
>      - etc.
>
>  Thoughts ? comments ?
>

Good question.  While UIMA doesn't include anything that converts from
OWL, it does include a converter that will go from an Ecore class
model to a UIMA Type System.  (Ecore models are similar to UML class
models and are used by the Eclipse Modeling Framework).

I have also heard about converts that go between OWL and Ecore, so
that would give you a two-step process to go from OWL to UIMA.  See
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/semanticstk.

Regards,
  -Adam