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@Jack! Cool to see you out here, at this convergence of erudition -- the OntoEAs! Your statement is nicely put.
You know, I wonder if it's time to dust off IDEF5 -- the ontology aspect of the IDEF universe. There is some wisdom out there that the old boys thought of, back in the day.
Doug On Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 6:00 AM, Jack Ring <jring@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Doug, Makes sense to me. I see an enterprise as a system of human beings who have a reasonably common Purpose along with an enabling set of Principles and Practices and an empowering set of facilities and machinery. I see enterprise architecture as the arrangement of function and feature that maximizes the objective function of that system. A reasonably common language is a fundamental feature of such an enterprise just as a reasonably common schema is a fundamental feature of their information system machinery. Some enterprises may find that taxonomies are sufficient but an intelligent, living enterprise must have a shared ontology.
Jack Ring On Aug 22, 2010, at 4:51 AM, Doug McDavid wrote: @Pavritha (and all) --
Let me present a fairly simple, but real, example of what I am talking about (hoping to find similar interest among this august confluence of ontology and enterprisology thinkers).
My current project is enterprise architecture for the California state prison system. In that system there is a word commonly used, across different departments, and that word is "bed". It is almost immediately obvious that in this (set of) domain(s), that word does not have the common, everyday connotation of a piece of furniture primarily used for sleeping. I would say that I just expressed an ontological positioning of the word bed as used in contexts that everyone is familiar with.
However, in the prison (corrections and rehabilitation) context, "bed" means much more. What it means is the cell location for a particular inmate. It is their entire living quarters though maybe not eating, maybe not recreational, depending on the institution. Because of the variance among institutions the word "bed" may bring social considerations, such as, should this inmate have a cell-mate, are there any gang-related issues to restrict the "bed" to a certain cell-block, what level of security must be maintained for this inmate (maximum security, etc.). Is this inmate a celebrity prisoner, of which we have our share in California, from Charles Manson to Scott Peterson.
I am not hoping to transform wardens and prison housing administrators into ontologists, such that their work register becomes a precise, logicalized patois. I am saying that it is incumbent on enterprise architects to understand the institutional architecture within they are working, and reflect that back to designers and decision-makers. I am also saying that such reflection would benefit from the rigorous understanding of meaning that I keep hoping is the mission of those who have taken up the banner of ontology.
Why am I concerned (in this example)? Partly because I see daily e-mails about beds becoming available in various institutions (whose names you might recognize -- Pelican Bay, etc.). Now, as a lowly sub-contractor working through a smallish consultancy that is in turn contracted with CDCR in conjunction with an IT system where HP is the prime, it seems strange to me that institutional confinement space allocation goes out as a broadcast e-mail, such that I get it. And this concern arises directly from an interest in classifying and unpacking what the enterprise is saying to itself, in its own natural, but parochial, language.
Does any of this make sense to anyone here? I think it is both entertaining and useful, but then no one ever said I was normal!
Cheers,
Doug
On Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 12:18 AM, Ian Bailey <ian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi,
The defence departments of Australia, Canada, Sweden, UK and US
have been working on a formal ontology to support their enterprise architecture
efforts – www.ideasgroup.org
All we’ve released so far is the foundation - http://www.ideasgroup.org/foundation/
- but quite a bit more has been done on building patterns for processes,
agents, information, systems, capabilities, etc. The foundation has been used
to underpin the DoDAF 2.0 meta-model (DM2) – though the resulting
meta-model isn’t what most people would recognise as an ontology. The
Swedish Armed Forces are investigating how the MODAF Meta-Model (currently a
UML Profile) could be re-engineered into a formal ontology based on IDEAS.
John Zachman was over in the UK in March for the Integrated-EA
conference and had some discussions with UK MOD on ontology and enterprise
architecture. From the brief conversations I had with him, he seemed very
enthusiastic about ontology in general.
At the same conference, Jonathan Carter and Jason Powell
presented on an open-source approach to EA development using Protege –
see http://www.integrated-ea.com/Previous-Years
Back in 2007, I presented on ontology and EA at the Open Group
and EA Europe conferences – slides are here: http://www.modelfutures.com/Publications/
That, and the paper from Top Quadrant (which has already been
mentioned in this thread) are the only efforts I’m aware of for “semantic
EA”.
Hope this helps --
Ian Bailey Model Futures
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