Thanks John, you raise some interesting points. I
don’t suppose there is much difference over the last 40 years when you
get down to basics.
I did consider UML - having watched over the last few
year the developments of MOF and ODM with the Object Management Group - however
my current thinking sees UML as something in the next phases of development of
the project. I'll explain my thinking and would welcome any thoughts on the
point.
The ontology will model a specific domain which is
business rather than software focused. I did mention software development in my
original email as we did see software developers as a user group but only using
the ontology as a reference source in the design stages to understand the
particular business environment. I am a bit old fashioned as my approach to
this comes my experience in the formal side of controlled vocabularies and
protégé frames in health informatics. So in this instance I see the merit in
developing the ontology free from any further constraints UML would add - it
would also require the team to learn UML to a high degree of knowledge. I am
not dismissing UML entirely as I do see it playing a useful role in the future
as the bridge to the software engineering field once the ontology has been
developed.
Perhaps the wording of the final point was misleading. As
mentioned earlier one of the use cases we envisaged for software development
was as a reference model rather as part of the application. Our future thinking
has involved the question of what would the enterprise do with the ontology and
that has lead to some exploration of an ontology management system but that is
something for next year.
I have explored loading a sample OWL ontology into
Semantic MediaWiki with some positive results so that does offer us one option
to consider. The other things I have been looking at recently are the JENA and
KAON projects, more for ideas and options rather than focusing on one or the
other as an end point. My preference is more towards the authoring system
provided by a system like Mediawiki as a means to exploit the ontological
model, rules and create instances in a user friendly environment. I am sure
there might be other systems to consider and perhaps you might have some
thoughts on that. Also I have yet to look at what the major system vendors -
Oracle, IBM (Websphere), HP etc. - are planning to do with ontology
integration.
rgds
Marc
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
Sent: 25 November 2009 03:49
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology development method
Marc,
MIW> I was wondering if anyone might be able to help
me by sharing some
> thoughts on and/or experiences of using ontological
development
> methods. I am about to embark on the development of
a business
> related ontology and would like to use an
appropriate method to
> provide credibility and guidance to the development
process.
For business applications, I don't believe that there is
any
difference in principle between what ontologists are
doing today
and what systems analysts and database administrators
have been
doing for the past 40 years.
MIW> The three methods I am considering are:
> * OTK method - On-to-Knowledge
> * Methontology
> * Ushold and King
I would add the UML design methodologies to that mix. I
have
often noted that the main reason why the Semantic Web is
still
outside the mainstream of commercial IT is that the
SemWebbers
ignored the problems, tools, and methodologies that
commercial
IT people have been working with over the past half
century.
MIW> The ontology will be developed in protégé v4 and
will support
> software developers, vendors and the construction
of enterprise
> knowledge bases.
Protégé is useful for generating OWL, but OWL is not
integrated
with what business software developers, vendors, and the
people
who develop enterprise data bases and knowledge bases
actually do.
If you want to support business applications, you have to
work
with the people who develop business applications. And
you have
to make sure that your tools are integrated with their
tools.
John Sowa
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