Software ontologies

Definition of Software Ontology

In computer science, the term ontology refers to a structure of concepts or entities within a domain, organized by relationships [1]

The specification takes the form of a representational vocabulary (classes, relations, and so forth), which provide meanings for the vocabulary and formal constraints on its coherent use. [2]

A software ontology is a classification of categories describing software with explicit specifications of its entities and relationships.

We are working on a list of all ontologies, vocabularies and metadata formats describing software. The categorization of contexts is defined as follows:

• software ontology: for a well defined ontology using xml/rdf with a direct link to the ontology itself
• linked data: vocabularies used by search engines
• generic: metadata terms used in other contexts as well as software domain
• research: metadata terms used in research context, in particular software citation
• catalog: metadata terms in a specific catalog
• dev: metadata terms used in the development process. Can be contained in the software source code package, depending usually on code language

Ontologies, vocabularies and metadata terms

Pointers to relevant software ontologies and software metadata, that might be used as inspiration for the upper-level/metadata part of the Software Heritage data model.

name	description	context	created	last update	version	links	in CodeMeta crosswalk table	file name
ADMS.SW	Asset Description Metadata Schema for Software, and specifically FOSS	software ontology, research	2012	2015	1.00	global description , specification, rdf2html	no	-
DOAP	Description of a project	software ontology	2010	2017	no version	on github, on wikipedia, rdf	waiting pull request	doap.xml, doap.json
Schema.org	Vocabularies for structured data use on the internet and beyond. Code, SoftwareSourceCode and SoftwareApplication are the main classes describing software.	linked data	2011	2017	3.2	homepage wikipedia github	no but used by CodeMeta
SEON	A family of Software Evolution ONtologies	software ontology	2012	unknown	no version	homepagedocumentation[]	no
SWOP	The Software Ontology Project- "is a resource for describing software tools, their types, tasks, versions, provenance and data associated." funded by the JISC	software ontology	2011	2016	-	SWOP, sourceforge project, overview blog post	no
TOTEM	Trustworthy Online Technical Environment Metadata Database for digital objects in general	generic, catalog	2008	unknown	unknown	homepage	no
Wikidata	provides data about software with Q7397	linked data, catalog	2012	2017	no version	generic software propreties, FOSS-specific propertiesgithub Source code page	no
Dbpedia	Multi-domain ontology mappings: between dbpedia and schema.org without Software entities between dbpedia and wikidata and a wikiparser	linked data	2007	2015	3.11	software page software_code page	no
DataCite	the schema is not software specific	generic, research	2009	2016	4.0	schemaguidlines	yes
Dublin Core	-	generic	-	-	-	-	yes
Zenodo	exported possibilities : MARCXML, Dublin Core, and DataCite Metadata Schema	generic, research	-	-	-	github citable-code	yes	no file in source code
Figshare	Making research outputs available online	generic	2011	-	-	-	yes	no file in source code
code.jsonld	in CodeMeta crosswalk table but can't find source	-	-	-	-	-	yes
R Package Description	DESCRIPTION file stored in an R package, containing important metadata	dev	-	-	-	-	yes	TBD
Debian Package	An effort to collect meta-information about projects. Trying to use DOAP vocabulary. Captured in a file called debian/upstream/metadata in YAML format. another file with EDAM ontology can be provided at: debian/upstream/edam	dev	-	2017	-	wiki	yes	debian/upstream/metadata
debtags	debtags are terms used to describe package content in a non-formal way.	dev	2005	2017	no version	vocabulary wiki	no	not in source code
Python Distutils (PyPI)	The Python Package Index (PyPI) stores metadata that describes package. setup;py file is used when package was packaged and distributed by Distutils (the standard for distributing Python Modules)	dev	1999	2017	35.0.1 Setuptools	setuptools doc wikipedia analyzing pypi metadata 2015	yes	setup.py
Trove Software Map	Distutils Trove Classification	dev	1998	2002	-	Trove project usage with Python	yes
CPAN::Meta	Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) used somewhat like a package manager. The CPAN::META known as META.yml or META.json file is typically created by other tools, Module::Build and ExtUtils::MakeMaker. The raw form of the metadata doesn't exists in the source code.	dev	2003	-	2.150010	wikipedia homepage on github	yes	META.json, META.yml, .spec
Ruby Gem	Specifications in Ruby called gemspec that can hold arbitrary metadata in a .gemspec file or a Rakefile	dev	2006	2015	0.3.1	guide on github	yes	.gemspec, Rakefile
JavaScript -npm	A package.json file containing specifications about npm package. The name and version of the package are a unique identifier, changes to the package should come with changes to the version	dev	2010	2017	-	documentation guide	yes	package.json
Maven	pom.xml file in the project root. POM stands for "Project Object Model", an XML representation of a Maven project.	dev	-	2017	3.5.0	POM reference maven model	yes	pom.xml
Octave	DESCRIPTION file in package which contains various information about package	dev	-	-	-	howto	yes	DESCRIPTION
CodeMeta	a minimal metadata schema for science software and code, in JSON and XML	software ontology, research, linked data	2014	2017	no version	homepage on github schema	yes	code.json
Marc	MAchine-Readable Cataloging MIT is using MARC records	generic	1960s	-	-	homepage	no

PRONOM - [3]

DOLCE -Outdated ?

CSO - Outdated ?