Not every business model *wants* precision of description and communication. (01)
Many in the commercial real estate world, for one example, feel what they
are buying is a superior awareness of what is, or what could be, than the
seller knows. The seller may feel the same. A model of full and perfect
knowledge on each side would slow business and reduce opportunity. (02)
I shared with this list a couple years ago an observation from C-level
executives at some of the largest REITs in North America, that a company's
ontology is its unique value proposition, and is the sole responsibility of
its executives. What they wanted from folks like those on this list is clear
and clean semantics in which to express this ontology. Bonus points if the
semantics were such that the Leasing Agent could use them. (03)
I don't for a minute think that this covers all cases, but it is an
important perspective, an anvil on which to beat other concepts of ontology
on. Clearly, an ontological sales pitch that runs counter to this
perspective would be a tough sell. (04)
tc (05)
"If something is not worth doing, it`s not worth doing well" - Peter Drucker (06)
Toby Considine
TC9, Inc
TC Chair: oBIX & WS-Calendar
TC Editor: EMIX, EnergyInterop
U.S. National Inst. of Standards and Tech. Smart Grid Architecture Committee (07)
Email: Toby.Considine@xxxxxxxxx
Phone: (919)619-2104
http://www.tcnine.com/
blog: www.NewDaedalus.com (08)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Eddy
Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2011 9:51 AM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Quote for the day (09)
Mike - (010)
On 2011-01-04, at 6:48 AM, Mike Bennett wrote: (011)
> And without business review and oversight of what this data is
> becoming in the arcane world of data, because they have left it to the
> data geeks to deal with it. (012)
Excellent description of what actually happens. (013)
Not that I can vouch for the accuracy, precision, & unambiguous language in
business documents, at least (I'd like to think) such documents are reviewed
by multiple parties from different perspectives (legal, business, etc.)
thereby editing out ambiguities. (014)
These are what I—as a techie—refer to as "formal documents"...
written by humans, edited by humans for human consumption. (015)
Unfortunately, as you so aptly describe, toss this knowledge into the
systems development process & we end up with programs & databases that are
not read/inspected/edited for understanding. The primary rules in systems
are (1) get it working yesterday (particularly in financial services), so
difficult-to-impossible to understand short cuts are the rule of the day,
and (2) if it works no one from the business side will ever read code or
database schemas for understandability. (016)
In programming "code reviews" or "peer reviews" are known to be one of the
most productive means of improving code quality. Code reviews with a
business analyst is something that simply doesn't happen as far as I know. (017)
I can think of one single instance where I (as a programmer) participated in
a review with the business/system owner. (018)
The fundamental issue here is there's no formal mechanism that attaches the
business language & definitions to what gets written in code. (019)
I would say that the business types have abdicated their responsibility &
the data folks have done the best they can with what they have. Please to
remember that the data folks are typically excluded from the business side
of the discussion. (020)
___________________
David Eddy
deddy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (021)
781-455-0949 (022)
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