Lauser

Agricultural Ontology Web Services: 

Agricultural Ontology Web Services Striving for more interoperability in agricultural information management OASIS Symposium 2006 9 May 2006 Boris Lauser Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy

Overview: 

Overview FAO and its role Introduction to AGROVOC thesaurus Present situation and problems AGROVOC web services AOS and AOS Concept Server Outlook: AOS/CS web services AGROVOC thesaurus Present Situation AGROVOC web services AOS Agricultural ontology web services

The role of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): 

The role of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) The First Article of the FAO Constitution: “The Organization shall collect, analyse, interpret and disseminate information relating to nutrition, food and agriculture.” WAICENT: World Agricultural Information Centre Knowledge Management Information Dissemination Collaboration with internal/external stakeholders Promotion of Agricultural Information Management Standards (AIMS) (bibliographical databases, use of metadata and knowledge organization systems (KOS) like thesauri, ontologies, etc.) AGROVOC thesaurus Present Situation AGROVOC web services AOS Agricultural ontology web services

What is AGROVOC?: 

What is AGROVOC? Multilingual Thesaurus; Structured vocabulary to cover terminology in agriculture, fisheries, forestry, food and related domains; Currently available in 14 languages; about 30.000 terms Available online at http://www.fao.org/aims/ag_alpha.htm. AGROVOC thesaurus Present Situation AGROVOC web services AOS Agricultural ontology web services

Use of AGROVOC: Metadata from controlled vocabularies: 

Use of AGROVOC: Metadata from controlled vocabularies AGROVOC thesaurus Present Situation AGROVOC web services AOS Agricultural ontology web services

Present Situation: 

Present Situation AGROVOC thesaurus relational database master copy local copy AGRIS center Thailand local copy AGRIS center Venezuela local copy AGRIS center Ukraine WebAGRIS input system local copy x local copy y local copy z local thesaurus browser z ..... AGROVOC thesaurus Present Situation AGROVOC web services AOS Agricultural ontology web services

Problem: 

Problem request to add new term “Avian Flu” new term and relationships added local copy AGRIS center Vietnam local copy AGRIS center Y local copy AGRIS center Z Outdated! need to create an updated export and resubmit the physical database to each AGROVOC user AGROVOC thesaurus Present Situation AGROVOC web services AOS Agricultural ontology web services

Summary of Problems: 

Summary of Problems Local databases are frequently outdated (AGROVOC updated 3-monthly); Overhead for FAO to export and send new copies with every update / new request; Local applications need to be customized to AGROVOC’s specific database structure; A new interface needs to be implemented on the local application level for each other thesaurus to be used. AGROVOC thesaurus Present Situation AGROVOC web services AOS Agricultural ontology web services

The solution: web services: 

The solution: web services AGROVOC web services interface update 1 update x ... java web services interface SOAP WSDL local application x local application y ..... AGROVOC web services interface SOAP WSDL AGROVOC thesaurus Present Situation AGROVOC web services AOS Agricultural ontology web services

AGROVOC web service: 

AGROVOC web service Web service with 6 simple operations: getTermcodeByTerm getTermByLanguage getAllLabelsByTermcode searchByTerm getConceptByTerm getDefinitions sufficient for the most important thesaurus information http://www.fao.org/aims/ag_webservices.jsp AGROVOC thesaurus Present Situation AGROVOC web services AOS Agricultural ontology web services

AGROVOC web services: 

AGROVOC web services implementation using standard technologies Eclipse Web Tools Platform SOAP WSDL Apache Tomcat AGROVOC thesaurus Present Situation AGROVOC web services AOS Agricultural ontology web services

Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS): 

OWL Web Ontology Language Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Elevate terminology services to the semantic web; Transform AGROVOC thesaurus to AOS Concept Server; Move from proprietary relational databases to standard formats. AGROVOC thesaurus Present Situation AGROVOC web services AOS Agricultural ontology web services

Agricultural Ontology Web Services: 

Agricultural Ontology Web Services Outlook on possible future web services: Retrieval of standard OWL representation of terminology; Retrieval of semantically richer concepts; Retrieval of semantically richer relationships; Retrieval of more lexical information (synonyms, acronyms, spelling variants...); Automatic translation services; Automatic text classification services; Mapping services to other standard terminology systems. AGROVOC thesaurus Present Situation AGROVOC web services AOS Agricultural ontology web services

References: 

References Agricultural Information Management Standards http://www.fao.org/aims AGROVOC Web Services http://www.fao.org/aims/ag_webservices.jsp AGROVOC thesaurus Present Situation AGROVOC web services AOS Agricultural ontology web services

Thanks for your attention: 

Thanks for your attention