Talk:Ontology language

Thick
I think we all agree that this shit is pretty thick and hard to understand. I suggest someone using wikipedia as a *great* example of ontology in action. Hopefully that will provide a clear understanding and an appropriate context? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.217.244.128 (talk • contribs).


 * Hi, I'm not sure that I understand your question. The Ontology language article does need some improvement. But Wikipedia is not an ontology, so I don't see how it would make a great example. Also, have you taken a look at the Ontology (computer science) article? That may have more of the introduction you're looking for? Gwernol 12:45, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Renaming the links in the "Context" part might make things clearer
Presently the initial "Context" part says:

" Ontology languages are formal languages used to construct ontologies. They allow the encoding of knowledge about specific domains and often include reasoning rules that support the processing of that knowledge."

And in theory that would be fine because the link on "ontologies" leads to ontology (computer science), which is a very clear introduction (and I'm speaking as someone who only knows of the Semantic Web by hearsay so far). But psychologically, the problem is that the sentence "Ontology languages are formal languages used to construct ontologies", read on the surface level, sounds just tautological and thus doesn't incite one to click on the ontologies link. So maybe the Context part could be reworded with a small addition at the beginning:

"The phrase Ontology languages refers to "ontology" in the computer science meaning of the word. If you are not familiar with this meaning, please read  ontology (computer science) first."

(I'm not going to risk editing the item myself, though, due to my ignorance of the subject) Calmansi

Business Management
Business Messaging is a prime example of Ontology. With Business Messaging, a group of companies with varying technology, can send similar data, but in different formats, to the Business Messaging company. The various types of data are scanned, if hardcopy, or imported into the system. Ontology languages are then used to sort/recognise and group the data to give a unified set of structured data in a format all parties can use. What the customer submits is a mish-mash of flat-file, harcopy and/or database data. What he receives is one set of data sorted into catagories, sub-catagories and objects. - Jason Davis - jd_abc@hotmail.com


 * That is a good example of the use of an ontology. If you can find good references for this use, then you can add that to the article. Good luck, Gwernol 22:03, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

This Article seems like Original Research
I think I understand the ideas expressed here but there are no specific references to back them up. Also, I'm pretty well read on the topic of ontologies and frame languages and I don't recall ever reading anything that described the various languages as they are described in this article. I.e., I think this whole article may qualify as original research. Also, it pretty much overlaps with the Frame language article. I may add a merge proposal but for now wanted to document this is possible OR and needs some serious attention. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 18:28, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Here are the results of some bibliographic database queries that I ran just a moment ago (19 May 2017):

The large numbers in the Google Scholar results are, of course, approximate. The redundancy in queries is for rhetorical effect.

Conclusions I draw from this data set: (1) "Ontology language" is a genuine subject, and the term is more widely used than the term "frame language", so if the articles were to be merged, it would not be ontology language into frame language but the other way around, however: (2) There is little overlap between the literatures on ontology languages and frame languages, so merging the articles appears contraindicated, but this would have to be confirmed by surveying the content of the articles. (3) There is plenty of literature from which to construct a good, well-referenced article. Biogeographist (talk) 01:17, 19 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I don't find your argument at all convincing. You can't just base these things on the results of Google searches. You have to read the actual articles. In IT people often use different words or phrases for essentially the same idea. I do agree that there is a distinction between ontology languages and frame languages. The term "frame" or "frame language" is seldom used in AI anymore and the most popular ontology language (OWL) is not really a frame language, its based on FOL where as Frame languages (usually) are more ad hoc and don't have a formal basis. KEE (Knowledge Engineering Environment) for example. In any case, my real point is this article is essentially just a list and the way the list is organized as far as I can tell is just based on some editor's intuition (i.e., wp:or) And the important question isn't if there is a difference but is there enough of a difference to merit two articles, especially when one article (this one) is essentially worthless as is? --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:10, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
 * One more point regarding your search. It looks like you searched for: ("frame language" and "ontology language") but not ("frame language" and "ontology"). My guess is you would find very few articles that talk about frame languages that don't use the term ontology. So for example in an article about KEE it may not say "KEE was one of the most popular commercial ontology languages in the early days of AI" but it would almost certainly say things like "the way a developer uses KEE to create an ontology is..." --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:53, 19 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I completely agree that (as you said) "You have to read the actual articles." When I said, "Conclusions I draw from this data set..." I wasn't referring to the numbers alone; I glanced at the top results for each query, and I said above, "this would have to be confirmed by surveying the content of the articles". I also agree that (as you said) "this article is essentially just a list". I also agree that (as you said) "people often use different words or phrases for essentially the same idea" (and not just in IT). For a funny example of this, see Template:World view. You also said: "I do agree that there is a distinction between ontology languages and frame languages." That was exactly my point, so I agree that we agree, at least regarding your first paragraph.


 * {| class="wikitable sortable"

! Search terms !! Results
 * + Queries on Google Scholar (words anywhere)
 * "frame language" OR "frame languages" || 2,730
 * "frame language" OR "frame languages" -"ontology" || 2,050
 * }
 * "frame language" OR "frame languages" -"ontology" || 2,050
 * }
 * }


 * Regarding your second paragraph, you said: "My guess is you would find very few articles that talk about frame languages that don't use the term ontology." That is an easily testable hypothesis, and it appears to be disconfirmed (depending on how you define "very few"); three out of four articles on Google Scholar that mention "frame language" OR "frame languages" do not mention "ontology". See the preceding table. Biogeographist (talk) 12:16, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply and for doing the work to do the searches. I accept your point and I think we are pretty much in agreement. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:28, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Distributed Ontology Language
This is another language that could be added to Wikipedia's list of ontology languages. Jarble (talk) 08:21, 8 October 2016 (UTC)