[esip-semantictech] Ontology portal recommendati

[Mcgibbney, Lewis J (398M)]

Hi Ruth,


On 5/23/16, 10:58 AM, "Ruth Duerr" <ruth.duerr3 at gmail.com> wrote:

>Hi Lewis,
>
>I hadn¹t forgotten that.

:)

>That may resolve the identifier issue (at least in the short term -
>maybe) but not the question of where should the ontologies live and be
>curated from for the long term and how does the field guarantee long-term
>access?

Honestly I think that your particular case demonstrates that a) long term
guarantees are difficult to find/achieve, and b) the ¹safest¹ tactic is
probably compromiseŠ at least until we (ESIP Semantic Tech Committee) can
agree on the platform through which to facilitate what you are after.

>
>Copies of my ontologies are both on github which is where Google migrated
>them when they took Google Code down and in the ESIP semantic portal; but
>what is the real "right solution?  Is github sufficient?

For source code management yes. For resolving URI¹sŠ No. You/we should be
using a semantic data portal.

>If so, then does ESIP need a semantic repository?

Well, IMHO the semantic repository is more than just hosting ontologies.
It is a critical piece of infrastructure which is topically relevant,
supports development and collaboration and also enables community growth
here @ESIP.

>Do we need both (the ³Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe" concept says
>probably yes); but who is going to curate these and keep both copies in
>sync for the long term.  Yes, I can do so now (though unfunded); but that
>won¹t last forever.

I agree. Hence the reason that I say the comment grown aspect is critical.
I would suggest that simple scripts are written to merely poll a Github
master branch and pull in the most recent commit into the ESIP Semantic
Repository. The ability to do this would either be standalone e.g. A local
script, or else could be built in to the underlying Semantic Repository
itself. 

> 
>
>I submit that my experience to date says not to trust any external
>provider even if they say that they are working to provide long term
>support.  I mean really, I used Google code to make the ontologies public
>and I used PURL¹s for all the URL¹s so that I could redirect the URL¹s if
>the ontologies needed to be moved somewhere else.  The problem is that I
>no longer can redirect them since OCLC is abandoning PURL.org.

Yes. Bloody frustrating indeed and to make it worse, the more code you
write the more of a PITA this issue becomes.

>  
>
>So this experiment in providing long term access to semantic resources
>failed because none of the tools lasted longer than 3 yearsŠ  That
>doesn¹t give great confidence that the concept of reusable semantic
>resources has a chance of ever happening in the Earth sciences.

Well I think that GoogleCode, Github, PURL, etc are not under control of
ESIP. It¹s understandably frustrating but not really ESIP or wider Earth
Science communities fault.

>
>And if you think this sounds a lot like the research data problem, well
>you are right it absolutely does!
>

It sounds like it.
Thanks
Lewis