= Overview =

Most of the discussions at this hackathon deal with technology issues relating to interoperability. A few of the discussions are discuss [http://www.open-bio.org/wiki/Main_Page OpenBio*] "platform specific implementations" - language APIs (!BioRuby, !BioJava, !BioPerl, etc.), web service protocols (!BioMoby ''et. al.'') and database implementations (i.e. !BioSQL).  A general issue relating to harmonization of community semantics or, at least, establishing a community process for semantics management, is recognized. This !OpenSpace discussion is targeting this issue for further progress.

The broader scope of this discussion is titled '''OpenBioSemantics''' rather than simply '''Ontology'''.

''' Convenor/faciltator: ''' Richard Bruskiewich

= Proceedings =

= Summary of Day 1 Discussions (11th Feb. Afternoon !AcademyHills) = 

== Preliminary Observations: Framing the Problem ==

Cathedral versus the Bazaar: the global community of bioinformatics are struggling with the issue of semantics, and various formalisms are currently being used to capture such semantics, i.e.

 * '''Formal Code Implementations:''' implied semantics expressed as an API and body of computer code (e.g. [http://www.open-bio.org/wiki/Main_Page OpenBio*] initiatives)
 * '''Data Formats:''' expressed as standard, human readable semi-structured text (e.g. sequence formats: FASTA, Genbank, EMBL)
 * '''Object models:''' expressed in Unified Modeling Language (UML) (e.g. [http://fuge.sourceforge.net/ Functional Genomics Experiment model] and [http://pantheon.generationcp.org/demeter Generation Challenge Programme domain model])
 * '''Ontology initiatives:'''
   * '''OBO format driven:''' e.g. [http://www.geneontology.org Gene Ontology (GO)], [http://www.sequenceontology.org/ Sequence Ontology (SO)], etc.
   * '''OWL format initiatives:''' [http://obi.sourceforge.net/ Ontology for Biomedical Investigations]
 * '''XML Schema driven languages:''' [http://www.embracegrid.info/page.php?page=home EMBRACE WS-I], [http://www.tdwg.org TDWG ABCD schema in !BioCase+Tapir], etc.
 * '''Common Database Schemata and Queries:''' BioSQL, [http://www.gmod.org Generic Model Organism (GMOD) Chado], [http://www.icis.cgiar.org International Crop Information System], etc.
 * '''Web Service Protocol Data Types:''' e.g. [http://biomoby.org BioMoby data type object hierarchy]

At this meeting, a general desire is being expressed to achieve some level of interoperability, at least, between [http://www.open-bio.org/wiki/Main_Page OpenBio*] initiatives generally, and more specifically, between [http://www.open-bio.org/wiki/Main_Page OpenBio*] and web services protocols like [http://biomoby.org BioMoby] and [http://www.embracegrid.info/page.php?page=home EMBRACE].

An addition targeted need is simply to harmonize specific ontology pertinent to key interoperability technology. A specific example of such a need (from M. Wilkinson) is the harmonization of [http://www.biomoby.org BioMoby] and [http://www.mygrid.ac.uk myGrid] service ontology.

It is generally agreed that semantics is a hard community problem ("herding the cats") but can be made tractable by "divide and conquer" (witness the relative success of GO and other similar ontology development communities).  Efforts should and generally are, driven by a specific set of practical tasks in the community, on an "as needed" basis. The expectation to create a consensual "mother-of-all-biological-data-models" is most likely unrealistic, but can some agreement on the general principles, process and tools of semantic collaboration be achieved?