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="..." resource="..."/>

   ...

   <sms:Annotation source="..." 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 name certain resources and ontology terms. The Label element assigns the name attribute value as the name, or "tag" for the associated resource given by the resource attribute value (this attribute value is an identifier for a resource). A label name is used within an annotation to describe a resource. Each Label tag is required to have exactly one name and object attribute. A SemanticType element must have at least one Label sub-element. Further, no two Label elements within a semantic type may have the same value for the name attribute.

Annotations

• How to give the annotation of a resource as a dl-style expression, preferably in the same language
• Discuss/explain what a resource dentoes, e.g., is it a name that denotes a set of instances (e.g., a dataset/table name denotes a set of instances, where an instance is a row in the table). What about for actors?
• Discuss/explain that the "structure" language is generic and can represent many data models (ptolemy types, relational, even xml).
• Describe the language step-by step, without a grammar :)

Examples