Kepler: Issueshttps://projects.ecoinformatics.org/ecoinfo/https://projects.ecoinformatics.org/ecoinfo/ecoinfo/favicon.ico?14691340362004-04-30T18:06:14ZEcoinformatics Redmine
Redmine Bug #1546 (Resolved): dynamic data and actor views using ontologieshttps://projects.ecoinformatics.org/ecoinfo/issues/15462004-04-30T18:06:14ZMatt Jonesjones@nceas.ucsb.edu
<p>Current lists of actors (and planned data sets) are static in that the tree is<br />statically written into a MoML model and displayed. This severely limits the<br />user's ability to find appropriate actors (and data sets) as the number of<br />actors grows. The current tree is a combination of functional and project<br />oriented folders, with no consistent classification.</p>
<p>This proposal is to generate dynamic views of the actors and data sets by<br />organizing the actors into trees using simple ontologies and controlled<br />vocabularies. Each actor (in its MoML code) and each data set (in its metadata<br />description) would contain term references that are drawn from one or more<br />ontologies. For example, an actor might be classified as belonging to the Class<br />"SimulationModel" while another actor might belong to the Class<br />"AnalyticalModel". If both AnalyticalModel and SimulationModel are subclasses<br />of "Model", then we could display a dynamically generated tree like this:</p>
<pre><code>Model
|__ SimulationModel
|__ AnalyticalModel
|__ NumericalModel
|__ IndividualBasedModel</code></pre>
<p>with each of the Actors displayed at the appropriate node in the tree. Of<br />course, if SimulationModel has subclasses itself, those could either be<br />collapsed to show all models under SimulationModel, or additional levels of the<br />tree can be added.</p>
<p>The same scenario applies to data sets, allowing people to browse data according<br />to a particular classification ontology. For example, data could be classified<br />as applying to certain types of measurements:<br /> PhysicalMeasurement<br /> ChemicalMeasurement<br /> BiologicalMeasurement
|__ MolecularMeasurement
|__ CellularMeasurement
|__ TissueMeasurement
|__ OrganismMeasurement
|__ PopulationMeasurement
|__ CommunityMeasurement
|__ EcosystemMeasurement</p>
<p>Although this example is somewhat contrived, it illustrates the type of ontology<br />one might use. Need to talk to some domain scientists to determine an<br />appropriate set of classifications for data.</p>
<p>Switching classification schemes would be done dynamically, on-the-fly. The set<br />of ontologies that are available for display would need to somehow be limited to<br />a meaningful set (all of the classes in even a small, simple ontology would<br />overwhelm the user). This could probably be set through a configuration. In<br />addition, the ontologies would need to be stored in a Kepler-accessible<br />location, possibly included with the release.</p>