Ecoterm:Data Model

• Data model influences design of
  • data publication formats
  • programmatic interfaces
• Data model also determines management and maintenance strategies and procedures
• Data model often implicit in a standard, not formally specified …
  • E.g. BS 8723, ANSI Z39.19
• Some ‘standards’ to consider …
  • ANSI Z39.19, BS 8723
    • "Traditional thesaurus" ...
    • model described in prose by BS 8723, ANSI Z39.19
    • Only terms reified, concepts implicit

• • SKOS Core
    • Explicitly concept-oriented data model
    • Specified formally using RDFS/OWL

• • OWL
    • Class/instance-oriented model (“ontologies”)
    • Formally specified via model-theoretic semantics

• • TMF - Terminology Markup Framework ISO 16642 (ISO TC 37)
    • Concept-oriented
    • Specified using UML
    • Really a framework for designing XML formats

• • ISO Topic Maps
    • Topics, Associations, Occurrences, Roles...

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Comments:

• ANSI Z39.19, BS 8723, SKOS Core, TMF broadly aligned …
• (I.e. T-O vs. C-O not necessarily at odds)
  • however N.B. choice of T-O vs. C-O model as foundation has implications for management/maintenance and URI use.
• Relationship to ontologies (OWL) … ?
• Topic maps … ?

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