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392 17 Answers to Selected Exercises

unimportant because the ontology will be used for research purposes by a

relatively small group of individuals for a short time. Since the purpose of

the project is to improve the understanding of concepts in the domain, it

will emphasize concept definitions. Description logic is ideally suited for

defining concepts. This suggests that one should use either OWL Lite or

OWL-DL. Since one would expect that the concepts will be relatively com-

plex, it is likely that OWL Lite will not be adequate. The most appropriate

ANSWER TO language for this project is therefore OWL-DL.

EXERCISE12.4

It is probably not appropriate to reuse SNPdb. The SNP ontology to be de-

veloped is concerned with high-level information about SNPs, not low-level

information about the experimental procedures that are needed for finding

SNPs. Importing all of the SNPdb would incorporate much more than is

required. However, it is certainly useful to look at the SNPdb ontology for

ANSWER TO design possibilities.

EXERCISE12.5

One possible way to classify SNPs is according to whether they affect genes

or are between genes. The SNPs that have a genetic effect are further subclas-

sified according to whether they are part of an exon, intron, or the regulatory

region of the gene. The class diagram is shown in figure 17.2. Of course,

there are many other ways that one could classify SNPs.

SNP

Genic SNP Intergenic SNP

Coding SNP Intron SNP Regulatory SNP

Figure 17.2 Concept hierarchy for the SNP ontology.