KRSMS Semantic Annotation Language

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KR/SMS Semantic Types

Datasets, actors (also known as services), and actor input and output ports are examples of resources that can have semantic types, that is, types that classify and constraint the semantic, as opposed to structural interpretation of resources. A semantic type may also describe how the semantic interpretation is "encoded" within a resource. For example, given a dataset whose semantic type is measurements of biomass for species sampled at certain locations, an "encoding" may state that a particular column denotes the biomass or that some other column denotes the location of measurements.

We define a semantic type as a set of one or more semantic annotations. Generally speaking, a semantic annotation assigns some object (or set of objects) within a resource a meaning, where the "meaning" is specified via ontology expressions (that use terms from ontologies). A semantic annotation serves to "link" or "glue" a portion of a resource to a portion of an ontology.

We describe here an XML representation for semantic types. Semantic types expressed in the XML representation take the form:

<sms:SemanticType ID="...">
 
   <sms:Label name="..." object="..."/>

   ...

   <sms:Annotation assign="..." meaning="..."/>

   ...

</sms:SemanticType>

A semantic type should have a unique identifier, which can be given using the ID attribute. The identifier should preferably be represented as an LSID, and the semantic type managed as an LSID resource.

Labels

Labels within semantic type descriptions provide a mechanism to rename certain resource and ontology items (objects). The Label element assigns the name attribute value to the value in the object attribute value. A label name is used within an annotation, and serves as a shorthand representation for the object in question. Each Label tag is required to have exactly one name and object attribute. A SemanticType element may have zero or more Label sub-elements. (_Should every term, except variables, used in an annotation require a label?_)

Annotations

Encodings define the "glue" or "links" between the resource(s) and the semantic type(s) and are optional. An encoding takes the form:

<sms:Link> ... </sms:Link>

The content of the Link element uses a specific textual language that we define briefly here.

Examples