[Obi-plan-branch] about the class 'information content entity'

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Dear OBI plan-branch developers,

This OBI branch is very important for our projects, and we wish to adjust
our representations to OBI.  Bearing this in mind, I would like to give
you some comments:

It looks strange to me that the class ‘information content
entity’ (definition: an information content entity is a
non-realizable information entity that 'is encoded in' some digital or
physical entity.) is defined as a subclass of  ‘non-realizable
information entity’ and as a sibling to ‘digital
entity’. It looks like ‘realizable information entity’
and ‘digital entity’ do not have content and can not be
encoded in some digital or physical entity.

But for example a protocol (‘realizable information entity’)
surely has some content and can be encoded in both a digital and physical
entity.
>From the information theory, it is possible to have a message with 0
information (= no content), but it is hard to imagine such a situation in
the real world. I would suggest adopting an assumption that any
informational entity has some content, otherwise why would you need to
include such an entity into an ontology? and it can be encoded in some
digital and/or physical entity.

Or I got it wrong?

My understanding of your ‘digital entity’ class is that it is
actually ‘digital form’; and the name of the subclass
‘electronic case report form’ supports this assumption.
Besides if a digital entity can not be encoded as a physical entity, you
run into a contradiction with the philosophy of reality.


I took an advantage of staying now at Prof. Riichiro Mizoguchi group
(Osaka U., Japan). He did some work on the representation of information
(see: Advanced course of ontological engineering. New Generation
Computing, 22: 193-220, 2004.). In his ontology of representations an
informational entity (or proposition in his terminology) has
representation; and representation has representational form and content.
We, Prof. Riichiro Mizoguchi  and I, had an interesting discussion about
the plan branch of OBI.
I would not suggest to entirely adopt his approach, but it can be used for
some improvements of the branch.

My suggestion is:
Define ‘information content entity’ as a subclass of
‘information artifact’, and then divide entities onto
realizable/ not.
Define a class with a similar meaning to Riichiro’s class
‘representational form’ (in your terminology it is a form of
encoding). Image (from ‘’information content entity’),
‘electronic case report form’ (from ‘digital
entity’) and some others should go there.

What do you think?
Best wishes,
Larisa Soldatova