Author Archives: Andy Brown

About Andy Brown

Researcher on the JISC-funded SWORD (Software Ontology for Resource Description) project, at the University of Manchester.

Populating the ontology

Posted on July 18, 2011

Following our workshop, in addition to implementing some of the necessary changes to the ontology, such as software suites, we’ve also been busy adding software.  The original SWO has been incorporated (although we still need to do some tidying), and … Continue reading →

Posted in methods, ontology | 2 Comments

The second SWOP workshop

Posted on June 30, 2011

Last Thursday and Friday saw the second of our two workshops held in Manchester.  The main aim was to test the ontology – to determine whether the priorities determined at the first workshop have been modelled effectively (to a limited … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Maturity – another encounter with ‘loose conventions’

Posted on June 17, 2011

The latest aspect of software we’ve been discussing and implementing for our ontology is ‘life cycle’. This is one of the features ‘bought’ by the workshop attendees in our planning poker session. We are interpreting this as a requirement for … Continue reading →

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Workshop outputs: personas

Posted on April 4, 2011

One of the more fun exercises in the workshop was to develop personas for the types of people who may want to use a software ontology.  These help determine the kinds of questions that may want to be asked of … Continue reading →

Posted in workshop | Leave a comment

Workshop Attendees

Posted on April 1, 2011

Our workshop brought together a wonderfully diverse group of participants, whose varied backgrounds and experience made the event so successful.  In addition to the members of the project, the attendees were, in alphabetical order: Tomasz Adamusiak (tomasz@ebi.ac.uk), bioinformatician from EBI. … Continue reading →

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Requirements and Scoping Workshop: Agenda

Posted on March 30, 2011

Today is the first of a two day workshop we are holding in Manchester.  The aim is to define the scope of the project and to capture the requirements for the software ontology.  To this end, the workshop brings together … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Considering Versions

Posted on March 24, 2011

When thinking about Operating Systems recently, the subject of versions came up.  This is clearly going to be a very important attribute that we will need to capture in our ontology.  All software has versions: rarely only one version (perhaps … Continue reading →

Posted in modeling | 2 Comments

Considering Operating Systems

Posted on March 17, 2011

Operating systems are an important class of software, and one which we will have to capture in our ontology.  I’ve only just started to think about them, and already they offer some interesting questions, many of which will be applicable … Continue reading →

Posted in modeling | 2 Comments

Software Licensing

Posted on March 2, 2011

One of the many aspects of a piece of software that we would like to capture in the software ontology is its license.  There is great variety in licensing, with many different variants of open-source license, and proprietary licensing almost … Continue reading →

Posted in ontology | 1 Comment

Project Members

Posted on February 28, 2011

SWORD is a joint project between the School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester, and the European Bioinformatics Institute at Cambridge.  The researchers on this project are: Dr. Robert Stevens Dr Robert Stevens is a Reader in Biohealth … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment