On Jan 3, 2011, at 4:00 PM, Ron Wheeler wrote: On 03/01/2011 9:13 AM, John F. Sowa wrote: On 1/3/2011 4:11 AM, Anders Tell wrote:
Drawing from my inter-industry standardization experiences
then it seems unlikely that there will be a common ontology
in the domain of international commerce.
One simple reason is that different legal systems require
different conformance for enterprise within their jurisdiction.
Yes, indeed.
I hate to disagree with such knowledgeable people but I would think that have international ontologies in the trade area would be very useful. I would think that local conformance concerns should be addressed by extensions and processes around an internationally agreed ontology. Having an unambiguous description of goods and services crossing borders (customs, homeland security, environment, regulatory reporting, etc.) would seem to provide a clear ROI for development of ontologies.
In this case I think we are on the same page. What I was trying to convey was that an singular ontology approach is not likely to work. Instead it is most likely more beneficial to look for an ontology approach with interlinked micro ontologies and theories (MOT) that are 'pluggable' and adaptable (extend, restrict,...)
An old and tired example, the Invoice or RequestForPayment Message. Not really a good example since most Invoice ontologies are old fashioned, since they are based on modeling paper/document versions of Invoices instead of corresponding to requests for reciprocal payment for delivery.
Anyway, maybe an request for payment could be modeled something along these lines:
A Message MOT ala UN/CITRAL: "Communication” means any statement, declaration, demand, notice or request, including an offer and the acceptance of an offer, that the parties are required to make or choose to make in connection with the formation or performance of a contract;" - with Communication adaptation(extension) point.
RequestForPayment Communication: with reciprocal Delivery and Payment Commitments. - Reference to a Product MOT with core semantics including the recognition that different people view Products differently depending of work perspectives, processes, life cycle, etc. - with a Product adaptation(extension) point.
An industry adapts their own Product' MOT for their constituents.
Two trading partners adapt and agrees on their own adaptations, based on their industry's Product' MOT
The above is an example of an eco-system view of ontologies.
/anders Anders W. Tell
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