[obs] Joining DwC, OBOE, PO and PATO

[Matt Jones]

I think this discussion is starting to hit on an important area where OBOE
does things a bit differently from EQ, in that in OBOE we always explicitly
separate the oboe:Characteristic and oboe:Value (and O+M does this too), and
so I have always thought of a pato:Quality as most closely aligned with our
concept of a characteristic.

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 12:51 PM, Hilmar Lapp <hlapp at nescent.org> wrote:

>
> On Oct 27, 2010, at 1:24 AM, Cam Webb wrote:
>
>> I don't see how to demarcate the level of hierarchy in PATO where a
>> pato:Quality shifts from just a oboe:Characteristic to a combination of
>> oboe:Characteristic and oboe:Value.
>>
>
> We have this exact problem in Phenoscape when we want to infer characters
> (for a matrix view) from a collection of EQ statements. To address this, we
> have introduced 'attribute' and 'value' subset annotations ("slims") to
> PATO. Based on that, we have an algorithm that returns the attribute for a
> PATO term Q as the first term in the lineage from Q to the root that is in
> the 'attribute' slim. (This may be Q itself.)
>

Given that this seems to be a bit of a workaround, wouldn't it be better to
separate these concepts altoghether -- you can always make composite
statements that include both the Characteristic and the Value, but of course
if you model them as if they are inherently linked (as in a Quality), then
there is no way to speak of the concepts separately.  Would PATO lose
anything by formally defining a Quality as an instance of
oboe:Characteristic and with a particular oboe:Value bound to it?


>
> However, as Chris points out, it might also be fair to view all of PATO as
> attributes (characteristics).


 This would certainly allow some greater compatibility among the models.

Matt
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