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Re: [ontolog-forum] Help me understand/evaluate the IDS-ADI project

To: <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "Julian Bourne" <jbourne@xxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2008 15:58:24 -0500
Message-id: <13F174E43E6C7C499C5A163A5A4AD30F0276A64C@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Hi Tony and others,    (01)

As a member of the IDS-ADI team, please allow me to make a couple of 
clarifications - for the rest of the readers, please evaluate Tony's questions 
in terms of these clarifications:    (02)

Not all of this work is being done in the context of the one project: for 
example, the reference data library infrastructure is an independent project to 
IDS-ADI.  Relating to that project, high availability will be required to allow 
reference data to be used in the context of real world projects, but no one 
would advocate relying on external network services in emergencies (well, no 
one should anyway IMHO, and we're certainly not making that assertion).    (03)

Not all of this work requires storage of data in its native ontological form - 
in fact, one of the crucial underlying points of the work is that we use RDF & 
SPARQL as a means to interoperability, not necessarily the core storage form or 
the usual form that mission-critical applications will directly utilise.  
IDS-ADI itself is only undertaking some of the representational challenges 
related to the 3D and other data, not baking the actual implementations.    (04)

As quick metrics, we've found we can find substrings in RDF triple objects in 
about 1.5 seconds over 2.5 million triples.  We can generate class summary 
pages using XSL and SPARQL in 2-5 seconds making around 150 SPARQL queries and 
probably around twice that number of XSL transforms.  But that only illustrates 
the performance available using free tools (Joseki/MySQL/Debian) working with 
straight triplestores on relatively low-spec hardware.  No one is saying that 
3D visualization of process control systems is wise to do over that kind of 
base - we think its an OK start for publishing reference data though.    (05)

With respect to RDF reference data - no one in IDS-ADI to my knowledge is 
stating that harmonization can be done automatically between reference data 
sets in different standards.  What we are suggesting however is that if two 
definitions can be expanded via DL rule sets over a shared ontology and 
reference data, then it should be possible to determine if they are 
semantically similar.  If you have a shared ontology, reference data and 
definitions in such rule sets, we think it is likely possible that 
transformations between information in one set and another set are possible to 
prove valid or invalid; and maybe also possible to generate or automate.  
There's more to it than this, but I'm not a logician, so I won't try to go 
deeper.    (06)

The point I wanted to make is that none of this is magical - we don't think you 
can just throw disparate RDF into a pot and get a delicious soup of perfect 
harmony;-)  We do think that RDF & SPARQL are a great platform for 
collaborating around reference data in many different ways.    (07)

I hope these clarifications help the readers answer Tony's questions; and also 
my apologies Tony if the message got garbled that badly on its way to you - we 
acknowledge as a group that we have a long way to go in communicating our 
accomplishments and intent.  Hopefully we will rectify some of that over the 
coming month.    (08)

Best Regards,    (09)

Julian.    (010)


Julian Bourne,
Product Manager and Research Analyst,
Products and Technology,
NRX Global Corp.
tel: +1 416 306 3365
email & msn: jbourne@xxxxxxx
gtalk: jbourne.nrx@xxxxxxxxx
www.nrx.com    (011)


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