[protege-user] Merging Imported Ontologies

I was helping someone start a new research project today where she is going
to start by leveraging several diverse vocabularies from different domains.
I showed her how to import an ontology.

When I do this, I typically merge the ontologies because in the past I've
had issues with imported ontologies. In the worst case, I often download
things like Prov to my local drive and then import that way. Of course that
leads to problems if I share the ontology because that path won't exist on
someone else's machine. So one bit of advice I gave my colleague was to not
do that and import from the URL rather than their local drive.

But I'm wondering should one still merge the ontologies in this situation
or not? After I do the Merge I usually delete the ontology import that
shows up at the bottom of the Active Ontology tab. That way there won't be
any issues with loading an ontology and not being able to load it because a
server for an imported ontology is down. On the other hand, it seems that
to have an audit trail, it is better to leave those import statements. I
think (although I haven't tested this) if you do the merge and an imported
(and merged) ontology isn't available it won't matter because you can just
say skip finding that import and the entities will still be there.

A related issue is what if an imported ontology changes? Not merging and
having the Import statement seems the "right" way to do it because you
would get the new version. On the other hand, if you are under a deadline
and you suddenly have to deal with a bunch of changes to one of the
imported ontologies that could be a pain.

Just wondering what people think are the trade offs here between:
1) Whether or not to merge an imported ontology and
2) Whether or not to delete the import statement if you do merge the
imported ontology?

Thanks in advance for any opinions,
Michael
https://www.michaeldebellis.com/blog

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