Purpose and Concept

In ChemConnect, keywords are arranged in a hierarchial tree of Concepts and Purpose concepts (both under the ontological concept skos:Concept). The hierarchy of concepts give context and meaning to each of the keywords and using keywords in the hierarchy standardizes the set of keywords facilitating comparison.

An important concept within the knowledge base which is found at all levels of data, from catalog entities to parameters, is the purpose and concept of the entity. These fields add more conceptual information to the data and are useful in making more intelligent searches. A hierarchy of purpose and concept fields are defined within the knowledge base.

The purpose of an entity specifies what use the entity has on a general level. The purpose of a parameter describing a device could be to give it’s the device’s configuration or physical dimensions or even its range of experimental conditions. The purpose of an observation could be to measure ignition delay times, flame velocities or species composition. The purpose of a sensor could be a pressure or a temperature sensor.