Lecture From Ideas To Ontologies - Part I

From Ideas to Ontologies
Daniele Francesco Santamaria
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Catania
Lecture for Web Reasoning, May 3, 24, 2019
Daniele Francesco Santamaria - Course of Web Reasoning Department of Maths and CS - Univ. of Catania 1 / 101
Motivation
Goal of the ontologist is to model the observed world.

Usually such a world is initially unknown.
Usually there is an expert of the domain that supports the
ontologist.
Usually such an expert is not a computer scientist.
And in particular, he has no idea about ontologies.
How the domain of discourse can be modelled?.
There are good practices that can be observed.
Good practices are not rules.
In General
The same domain can be modelled in different way.

There is no perfect model, in general.
Ontologist should consider many factors.
Balance between Performance/Redundancy and
Expressiveness.
Ontological metrics.
Goodness Index: Resiliency.
Good ontology can only be expanded.
Refactoring is expensive, once deployed. How much?
Developing an ontology.
Avoid Trial/Error.
It is Expensive, Frustrating, and Error Pruning.
In General
Good knowledge of the domain is necessary.

But what does it mean?.
Mind the future!.
Good dialectic means good interaction.
Good interaction means good understanding.
Good understanding means good design.
Good design means:
Fast delivering.
Easy expansion.
High Quality.
A lot in common with Software Design.
More difficult than Database Design.
In General
Database vs Ontology.
Graph vs Table.
Static vs Dynamic.
Data Integration.
Data Expansion.
Integrity/Consistency.
Reasoning.
Querying.
User Interface.
Benchmarking.
In General
Database can be mapped into ontology.

Concerning TBox.
Table column into class.
Attribute into data-type property restriction.
Foreign key into object-property restriction.
Concerning ABox.
record into appropriate individual.
attribute value into appropriate literal.
foreign key value into appropriate assertion.
In General
Database can be mapped into ontology.
In General
In General
In General
Usually database mapping is not straightforward.

Ontologies are more liberal and flexible.
Modifying deployed ontologies is not a good practice.
Example: What if a lecturer changes every year?.
Database record rewriting vs ontology rewriting.
In General
The middle-node rule.
Each instance of CourseActivity carries its own information.
Defining suitable TBox.
Other solutions available depending on the domain.

Phase I: Understanding the domain
Interviewing Experts.
Understanding goals.
Modelling the domain with UML/UML-like tools.
Which is the right philosophy?. Waterfall, agile, . . .
Cyclic phase.
Checking/modifying model.
First sketch of a stable model.
Phase I
Phase I: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery*

The renovation of the Catania’s Benedictines Monastery of San
Nicoló L’Arena and its adaptation to university campus performed
by the architect Giancarlo De Carlo is an important project of
cultural interest in Sicily. The monastery is in fact one of the
biggest in Europe and has been declared national monument in
1869. The history of its foundation is as much intricate as that one
of its recovery and readaptation as a university building. This is
why it is worth sketching its outlines, even if on a general scale.
*Distant Reading Through Ontologies: The Case Study of

Catania’s Benedictines Monastery. Cantale, Cantone,
Nicolosi-Asmundo, Santamaria. Italian Journal of Library, Archives,
and Information Science (JLIS) 8-3, pp. 203-219 (September
2017).
Phase I: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery
...The drawing up of Progetto Guida at the heart of the recovery of

the Monastery was a long process because of its shape, its new
usage, and the deep intertwining of historical stratifications.
During his engagement with the University of Catania, Giancarlo
De Carlo for the first time intensively tested the “progettazione
tentativa”. Thanks to this particular operational method, the
Progetto Guida was recognized by Regione Siciliana to be of
“important artistic interest”. Some of the solutions adopted were
often slightly and, sometimes, substantially different if compared to
the reading of Progetto Guida. The reasons that pushed Giancarlo
De Carlo and the Ufficio Tecnico Universitario to modify the
projects in progress are traceable in the numerous archaeological
findings, in the permissions by Superintendence, and in the
decisions made by the committing university.
... As a result, the reconstruction of the history of the Benedictines

Monastery restoration and of the political, economic and social
implications on the Catania area, turns out to be complicated...

The reconstruction of the relationships among the documents is
grounded on the building yard diaries, official documents drafted
by the architect to inform the Rector of the University of Catania
about the progress of works, and addressed in copy to the
Department Head Giuseppe Giarrizzo and the surveyor Antonino
Leonardi. Each report was accompanied by an introductory letter
sent to the three persons mentioned above. However, only letters
addressed to Leonardi and to professor Giarrizzo were classified.
Each report, when possible, is associated to one or two letters.
Letters are meaningful sources of information because they provide
indications and ideas by G. De Carlo which are not contained in
the reports. The building yard diaries, the letters addressed to
professor Giarrizzo, and the letters addressed to Leonardi are stored
in Archivio del Museo della Fabbrica, in the new archive of
Department Head, and in the personal archive of the surveyor
Leonardi, respectively.
Now what?
Building and related components.

People and jobs.
Documents.
Places.
Phase II: Integration and Developing
Ontologist should ask himself:

Relevant topic of the domain.
Relevant ontologies available on the web.
Level of expressiveness.
Data available on the web.
Can ontologies/data be reused?.
Can ontologies/data be extended?.
Phase II: Integration and Developing
Initial Schemas (partially) developed.

Ontologist should ask himself:
Class vs Instance.
Reuse vs Specialization vs Generalization.
Public vs Private.
Single Ontology vs Multiple Ontologies.
Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery
Building and related components.
People and jobs.
Documents.
Places.
How many ontologies?.
Phase III: Populating Ontologies
Data Serialization.
Parsing Data.
Manual vs Automatic vs Semi-Automatic.
Online vs Offline.
Consistency check.
Data completeness.
Reasoning.
Phase III: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery
Phase IV: Querying
What kind of query do you expect?.

How much accessible is the interface?.
Pure SPARQL vs Meta-SPARQL.
A lot of research in this field.
Phase IV: Querying
Phase IV: Querying
Phase IV: Querying
Phase IV: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery
Phase IV: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery
Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery
The ontology has been deployed. Now what?.
Abstraction phase
What is a monastery?.
What does ''canonic'' monastery mean?.
Can we ontologically define ''canonic monastery''?
Is Catania’s Monastery a ''canonic'' monastery?.
Implications?
Investigation phase.
(DeVecchi et al., 1995).
(Kubach, 2001).
(Gombrick, 1950).
(Willis, 1848).
The Saint Gall plan.
In the plan, the Saint Gall Monastery is idealized together with
its essential components.
Saint Gall Ontology
... the scroll of the Saint Gall plan stored in the Stiftsbibliothek
Sankt Gallen and representing the Swiss Monastery in plant is a
precious document not only from historical and artistic points of
view – it presents itself as a conceptual map of an “ideal
monastery” –, but also because of the organization of the
information easily readable due to its high-resolution digitalization.
Thanks to the schematic nature of the Saint Gall plan and since it
has been conceived with the purpose of organizing the spaces
according to the monastic life-style, leaded by the San Benedict
rule, it is a perfect source for the development of an ontology for
the “ideal monastery”.
Example II
Strongly inspired by the rule of Saint Benedict, the plan of St. Gall
is a model of monastery better representing the Benedictine
architecture. Founded in the context of Pre-Romanesque
Carolingian art and architecture, in which a varied partition of the
space is preferred, it can be considered a fixed-type for the Middle
Age monasteries. Moreover, being one of the most ancient
descriptions of primitive Benedictine monastery arrived intact
today, it turns out to be an important structural, architectonic,
and functional landmark for the Benedictine monasteries. In the
plan, St. Gall monastery is idealized together with its essential
components.
Example II
In fact, as it often happens in the context of architectural history,

buildings realized in a long temporal window are subject to change
with respect to the original idea because of historical, economical,
practical, and morphological reasons.
Many European monasteries are inspired by the St. Gall plan even
if for practical and technical reasons they deviate from it. For
instance, Catania’s Benedictine Monastery contains most of the
elements of the St. Gall plan with the exception of some locations
such as the brewery that, for cultural reasons, is replaced by a
distillery. Moreover, Catania’s Benedictine Monastery is a urban
monastery and therefore the structure of the animal farms is also
slightly modified.
The SaintGall Ontology describes buildings and green spaces

depicted in the plan of Saint Gall considering their cardinal
orientation, their position with respect to other entities inside
the plan, and their architectonic, structural, and functional
features.
Saint Gall Ontology
Can we ontologically define ''canonic monastery''?

The Shape of a Benedictine Monastery: The SaintGall
Ontology. Cantale, Cantone, Lupica Rinato,
Nicolosi-Asmundo, Santamaria. Proceedings of the third Joint
Ontology Workshops (JOWO-17), Bolzano, Italy, 21-23
September 2017. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, ISSN
1613-0073, Vol. 2050.
The Ideal Benedictine Monastery: From the Saint Gall Map to
Ontologies. Cantale, Cantone, Lupica Rinato,
Nicolosi-Asmundo, Francesco Santamaria, Maria Stufano
Melone. Submitted to Applied Ontology.
Saint Gall Ontology
Saint Gall Ontology
Saint Gall Ontology
Saint Gall Ontology
Saint Gall Ontology
Saint Gall Ontology
Saint Gall Ontology
Saint Gall Ontology
Saint Gall Ontology
Saint Gall Ontology
Saint Gall Ontology
Saint Gall Ontology
Saint Gall Ontology
Saint Gall Ontology
Are we able to answer to the following question?.

Saint Gall Ontology
According to some literature, the architectural type is a kind of

epistemological foundational knowledge. Specifically, an
architectural type is a logical statement that describes a formal
structure. Types regulate relational and functional systems, a kind
of ''mental projects'' that can be considered pre-representations of
the space preceding the design stage.
Tools
Graphical Tools.
Reasoners: Hermit, Pellet etc.
Specifications vs Implementation.
Built-in systems.
Natural Processing Languages.
End-point SPARQL.
OWL-API.
Jena Framework.
RDFa (RDF integration on HTML pages).
Continuously Updated.
Open Research.
Fluent Editor
Eddy
RDFa
RDFa
Schema.org (Microdata)
Notes
Large Domain and Team of Ontologists.

Concepts of Software Engineering.
Divide et Impera.
Round Tables.
Assigning Tickets.
Developing and Merging.
Notes
Large structured data have many pros ...

Access to knowledge.
Quantity and quality of data.
Access to people.
Access to news.
New horizons for job and commerce.
But
Downsides
''If solution satisfies your requirements but not your

expectations, it’s not a matter of solution but of requirement''
Downsides
In 2010 Facebook publishes Open Graph, a platform based on

structured data that allows third parts to be authorized by users to
get access to the personal information of them and of their friends
without the explicit consent of the latter and without advising
them.
In 2013 Aleksandr Kogan, a Cambridge’s academic, on behalf of its

society, the Global Science Research, a Facebook app called ''This
is your digital life'', a stupid, useless, end-in-itself psychological
test popular among three hundred thousand users.
Downsides
In 2014 Facebook changes data-collection policies but ''Cat’s out

of the bag''. No regulation can force to delete the collected data
and GSR can sell their ones.
In 2016 Donald Trump invests in Facebook advertises, asking

Cambridge Analytica for help. CA tracks ''psycograph'' profiles of
the users involved in the data-gate and sends via Facebook custom
pro-Trump electoral ads.
It seems that also Obama, Clinton (Hilary), and Brexit supporter

parties used data provided by CA for their campaigns (in different
ways).
In 2018 CA is Emerdata.
Consideration (not only) on

Open data.
Closed data.
Reserved data.
Digital Identity.
Privacy vs Knowledge.
Privacy vs Business.
Q&A
Question Time.
Ideas for Projects.
Ideas for MSc Thesis.
Topic:
Digital Humanities.
Natural Language Processing.
Internet of Things.

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From Ideas to Ontologies

From Ideas to Ontologies

Daniele Francesco Santamaria

Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Catania

Lecture for Web Reasoning, May 3, 24, 2019

Goal of the ontologist is to model the observed world.

The same domain can be modelled in different way.

Good knowledge of the domain is necessary.

Database can be mapped into ontology.

Usually database mapping is not straightforward.

Other solutions available depending on the domain.

Phase I: Understanding the domain

Phase I: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery*

*Distant Reading Through Ontologies: The Case Study of

Phase I: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

...The drawing up of Progetto Guida at the heart of the recovery of

Phase I: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

... As a result, the reconstruction of the history of the Benedictines

Phase I: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase I: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase I: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase I: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase I: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase I: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase I: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase I: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Building and related components.

Phase I: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase I: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase I: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase II: Integration and Developing

Ontologist should ask himself:

Phase II: Integration and Developing

Initial Schemas (partially) developed.

Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Building and related components.

Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

People and jobs.

Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

How many ontologies?.

Phase II: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase III: Populating Ontologies

Phase III: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase III: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase III: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase III: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase III: Example Catania’s Benedictines Monastery

Phase IV: Querying