DOLCE (Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering)

Title: DOLCE (Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering)
URI: http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/DOLCE-Lite.owl#
Description: DOLCE is the first module of the WonderWeb Foundational Ontologies Library (WFOL). DOLCE has a clear cognitive bias, in the sense that it aims at capturing the ontological categories underlying natural language and human common-sense. its authors believe that such bias is very important for the Semantic Web. DOLCE is an ontology of particulars, in the sense that its domain of discourse is restricted to them. A basic choice we make in DOLCE is the so-called multiplicative approach: different entities can be co-located in the same space-time (e.g. the vase and the amount of clay).
Languages: English
Ontology languages: OWL
Ontology format: RDF/XML
Alignments: See alignments

Evaluation results

The following evaluation results have been generated by the RESTFul web service provided by OOPS! (OntOlogy Pitfall Scanner!).

It is obvious that not all the pitfalls are equally important; their impact in the ontology will depend on multiple factors. For this reason, each pitfall has an importance level attached indicating how important it is. We have identified three levels:

Critical: It is crucial to correct the pitfall. Otherwise, it could affect the ontology consistency, reasoning, applicability, etc.
Important: Though not critical for ontology function, it is important to correct this type of pitfall.
Minor: It is not really a problem, but by correcting it we will make the ontology nicer.

P08. Missing annotations107 cases detected. Minor

Ontology terms lack annotations properties. This kind of properties improves the ontology understanding and usability from a user point of view.

This pitfall affects to the following ontology elements:

P24. Using recursive definition22 cases detected. Important

An ontology element is used in its own definition. For example, it is used to create the relationship "hasFork" and to establish as its range the following ��the set of restaurants that have at least one value for the relationship "hasFork".

This pitfall affects to the following ontology elements:

P25. Defining a relationship inverse to itself8 cases detected. Important

A relationship is defined as inverse of itself. In this case, this property could have been defined as "owl:SymmetricProperty" instead.

This pitfall affects to the following ontology elements:

P26. Defining inverse relationships for a symmetric one7 cases detected. Important

A relationship is defined as "owl:SymmetricProperty" and there is also a relationship (it could be itself or another relationship) defined as its inverse.

This pitfall affects to the following ontology elements:

P30. Missing equivalent classes1 case detected. Important

When an ontology is imported into another, classes with the same conceptual meaning that are duplicated in both ontologies should be defined as equivalent classes to benefit the interoperability between both ontologies. However, the ontology developer misses the definition of equivalent classes in the cases of duplicated concepts. An example of this pitfall can be not to have the equivalent knowledge explicitly defined between "Trainer" (class in the imported ontology) and "Coach" (class in the ontology about sports being developed).

This pitfall affects to the following ontology elements:

http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/DOLCE-Lite.owl#achievement , http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/DOLCE-Lite.owl#accomplishment

P36. URI contains file extension ontology *Minor

Guidelines in [5] suggest avoiding file extension in persistent URIs, particularly those related to the technology used, as for example ".php" or ".py". In our case we have adapted it to the ontology web languages used to formalized ontologies and their serializations. In this regard, we consider as pitfall including file extensions as ".owl", ".rdf", ".ttl", ".n3" and ".rdfxml" in an ontology URI. An example of this pitfall (at 29th June, 2012) could be found in the "BioPAX Level 3 ontology (biopax)" ontology��s URI (http://www.biopax.org/release/biopax-level3.owl) that contains the extension ".owl" related to the technology used.

*This pitfall applies to the ontology in general instead of specific elements and it appears in the ontology URI: http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/DOLCE-Lite.owl#

References:

[1] Gómez-Pérez, A. Ontology Evaluation. Handbook on Ontologies. S. Staab and R. Studer Editors. Springer. International Handbooks on Information Systems. Pp: 251 – 274. 2004.
[2] Noy, N.F., McGuinness. D. L. Ontology development 101: A guide to creating your first ontology. Technical Report SMI-2001-0880, Standford Medical Informatics. 2001.
[3] Rector, A., Drummond, N., Horridge, M., Rogers, J., Knublauch, H., Stevens, R.,; Wang, H., Wroe, C. ''Owl pizzas: Practical experience of teaching owl–dl: Common errors and common patterns''. In Proc. of EKAW 2004, pp: 63 – 81. Springer. 2004.
[4] Hogan, A., Harth, A., Passant, A., Decker, S., Polleres, A. Weaving the Pedantic Web. Linked Data on the Web Workshop LDOW2010 at WWW2010 (2010).
[5] Archer, P., Goedertier, S., and Loutas, N. D7.1.3 – Study on persistent URIs, with identification of best practices and recommendations on the topic for the MSs and the EC. Deliverable. December 17, 2012.
[6] Heath, T., Bizer, C.: Linked data: Evolving the Web into a global data space (1st edition). Morgan & Claypool (2011).