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Re: [ontolog-forum] Plural taxonomies?

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Mike Bennett <mbennett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 31 May 2010 18:30:19 +0100
Message-id: <4C03F22B.1090204@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
We don't rely on words for meanings, and I see no reason why anyone 
would. Terms are either Things or Facts, and each of these has a label 
which happens to be whichever word business domain experts are most 
comfortable with, and any number of synonyms which are other words with 
the same meaning.    (01)

The meaning of an individual kind of Thing is pinned down in two ways 
(and independently by its agreed written definition):    (02)

1. What kind of thing is it (taxonomy)
2. What facts about this thing distinguish it from another thing 
(ontology - adding facts about things in the taxonomy).    (03)

Question (1) uses the "Is A" relationship and therefore, de facto, 
defines a taxonomy. Question (2) looks at the properties of the thing 
(what we call, in English, Simple Facts and Relationship Facts; in OWL 
these are Datatype Properties and Object Properties).    (04)

Uniqueness would be an issue if we also imposed a global uniqueness 
requirement on the overall model, but this would not be realistic if one 
is to also use terms that business subject matter experts are familiar 
with. The alternative would be an ISO 11179 naming rules convention, 
which would be clumsy but could be used to provide a separate, unique 
name which is not displayed. True uniqueness belongs in the URI for each 
term. Since our model is created and edited in UML, the intention is 
that once this is transformed to OWL the UML package structure would be 
used to generate the URIs. Then we simply implement naming uniqueness at 
the package level.    (05)

I hope that makes you less nervous. Funds was one of the most difficult 
areas to model and still requires work (we intend to realign it with the 
most recent version of the EFAMA Data Dictionary, which was available 
only in an early draft when we did that part of the model).    (06)

Mike    (07)

David Eddy wrote:
> Mike -
>
> On May 31, 2010, at 10:23 AM, Mike Bennett wrote:
>
>   
>> In the EDM Council
>> semantics repository ontology, we have built the model around a
>> polyhierarchical taxonomy, in order to formally model each of the  
>> terms
>> that is considered meaningful in the industry.
>>     
>
> I am by NO means a professional taxonomist.  I watch them.  I get  
> VERY nervous when I see "hierarchy" used in the context of the  
> concepts & terminology in & around software information systems.
>
>
> How does the taxonomy/classification process handle the situation (I  
> assume the reality) of terms having multiple meanings?
>
> I am thinking in the context of having worked on "a" mutual fund  
> system that was a continually growing combination of a core package  
> which had been extensively modified, extended & customized plus the  
> addition of at least 7 additional "systems" (both packages & custom  
> written) grafted onto/into the original package.
>
> Obviously the chance of the same term meaning the same thing across  
> such an expanse was very close to zero.  And this was looooooong  
> before the concept of taxonomies being useful in information systems  
> came into the popular vernacular (as distinct from USE).
>
> ___________________
> David Eddy
> deddy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> 781-455-0949
>
>  
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>       (08)


-- 
Mike Bennett
Director
Hypercube Ltd. 
89 Worship Street
London EC2A 2BF
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7917 9522
Mob: +44 (0) 7721 420 730
www.hypercube.co.uk
Registered in England and Wales No. 2461068    (09)


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