OBOFoundry
Should OBO recommend against importing entire ontologies if not needed?
In an effort to minimize problems of term misalignment (for example, when different versions of the same term are imported from different ontologies), the EWG suggest that we recommend against importing whole ontologies, instead recommending importing only the needed subset.
Discussion from Ops meeting 2025-09-30:
- DN: We have the tooling to handle this (OntoFox, ROBOT).
- Jie: Has concern about full imports since these will also import imported terms.
- James: I think this is a good recommendation: You shouldn't import a full ontology into your OBO project unless you know you need to. There's handful of exceptions, which are small ontologies designed to be imported whole: COB, OMO, BFO, RO core.
- DN response: These exceptions should be noted in the recommendation, if adopted.
- Alex: In favor of editorial freedom; shouldn’t make any recommendation one way or other.
- DN response: This recommendation would be a SHOULD, not a MUST, so the freedom is still there. Plus, we make many recommendations that we think would benefit the community.
- Hande: I think this recommendation may create more confusion than guidance for new ontology developers who might not have the needed background to follow this recommendation..
- DN response: What if we added a note along the lines of ‘this is something to work towards’ and not any kind of immediate focus?
- DN: Would need to give examples of situations where entire ontologies need not be imported, and situations where it would be a good idea to import a whole ontology.
I am in favour of such a recommendation, and also to make sure that the recommendation describes the rationale for this recommendation that is easy enough to understand.
The community has evolved quite a bit and I am pretty convinced most groups now clearly understand the idea of modules and imports.
(Off topic: I would combine this page with a link to the recommendations of merging imported terms rather than using owl:imports in release files.)
James O: Some small, upper ontologies are designed to be imported in full: COB, OMO, RO core, BFO.