Ontologies

Today's workshop sessions started with a presentation bei Katja Seltmann (see her wiki page to check out some of her other projects!). She has a really diverse background and is currently working as a software developer/entomologist on the Hymenoptera Anatomy Ontology Project (HAO). An ontology comprises the definition of a set of concepts and the relationships between them. So, the HAO is basically a database that 1.) provides definitions of anatomical structures of hymenopterans, 2.) links these to several other fields, e.g. synonyms, literature references, etc. and 3.) defines the relationships between the structures (e.g. antennae are parts of the head, etc.). When you search for a term, you obtain the definition(s) for the structure, and a list of other structures related to the search terms, and the nature of the relationships.
The HAO group set up their own ontology, however, a platform for developing these interactively is freely available through Oboedit. With this software you can either create your own ontology, or access/edit other ontologies - for a list of these see Obofoundry. The ontologies here are not only anatomical - some are taxonomic, others biochemical, etc. The interface is easy to use and one gets a relatively good overview of the connections between different elements of the ontology.
I was trying thinking whether such ontologies would be useful for my legume project. I could create a taxonomic ontology, though, for my purposes, a simple database showing the relationships between different taxa would probably suffice. As for character ontologies - probably not that applicable to me either. However, it is 1.) always good to know what options re out there - perhaps something like this may come in useful at a later stage, and 2.) the exercise was informative in explaining how databases can be set up and also for introducing some aspects of XMLing (not discussed above).
Just as an aside - the blogging exercise is really helping me to synthesise all the information from the course. It's as Vince said - blogging should, perhaps, in the first line be seen as a selfish exercise to keep track of one's activities and synthesise information.