Rich, (01)
You ask a great question. It's not unlike the question the topic
mappers ask themselves on a regular basis, in this form: how to you
identify the subjects of your discourse (setting aside the simplistic
notion that one URI satisfies all users)? (02)
Stretch that question to this one: how do you create a fabric of
identifying methodologies that anyone can enter the loom and find what
they want? which entails mappings among identifiers. That's just not
well satisfied by a URI scheme, though, in the very end, each
particular identified subject could have a URI associated with it. (03)
Topic mappers use the term "legend" just as you find in a corner box
on a road map: a public declaration, essentially, of the keys used to
identify topics. Roads, towns, airports, etc, each have their own
iconic identifier. Mapping that over to the domain of ontologies,
there still are identifier keys, which vary among domains of
discourse. Here, I am talking about the various approaches, such as
phylogenetic nomenclature, subsumption hierarchies, and so forth. But,
subject identification is more complex than that if you wish to
include non-ontological commitments used by many, e.g. "Mary's
husband" which relies on relationship traversal, "seeing as" (roles
actors play), and more. (04)
I don't mean to sound like I'm avoiding your question; it's just that
it's nontrivial and worthy of serious effort to think through. Patrick
and I offered slides that orbited but by no means defined the space.
I'd like to point out that topic mapping is never (by me or my
friends) proposed as a substitute for ontology; rather, as an
amplifier to the discipline. While working on SRI's CALO project, I
wrote a paper [1] "Just For Me: Topic Maps and Ontologies", the
abstract of which is: (05)
"The development of the IRIS semantic desktop platform has provided
illumination of some important issues associated with the collection
and manipulation of knowledge assets that are organized by an
ontology. We explore those issues related to the personalization of
the workspace and of the knowledge assets manipulated by IRIS users.
We show that a topic map can provide a necessary mediation between the
formal organization provided by an ontology to serve the needs of
semantic interoperability between workstations and the individual’s
need to personalize the workspace in a just for me fashion." (06)
The value proposition proposed was simply to wrap many ontologies with
a topic map and let users of platforms controlled by those ontologies
customize the nomenclature to suit their needs and remain "in the
ontology". That's a simplistic approach, but one which I believe
points in a direction that could be seen as one of many possible
solutions to "semantic interoperability" without imposing Hobson's
Choice on any players. I cannot speak to CAD systems and so forth,
except to point out that, at an intuitive level, you might be
suggesting something useful that relates to what I just said. (07)
You asked:
> How do you forsee configuring of component ontologies into applications? (08)
The first and obvious (if only to me) solution is to craft a
crowd-sourced topic map that, um, maps all known ontologies, thus
providing a universal (careful there) index into ontologies. Where
those ontologies are "interoperable" (whatever that means in this
context) will become clear within the topic map. I want nothing to do
with telling an ontologist how to "configure" an ontology except to
the extent that there may be a new "best practices" set of techniques
that render ontologies more "mappable" (whatever that might mean).
The topic map is just that, a map of a territory, but with a really
nice and convenient benefit: it's not an index of the back of a book
where you actually have to jump to the page to see what's going on; a
topic map may contain enough information to satisfy a particular
interest without navigating to a specific other document. (09)
Jack
[1] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.86.2763 (010)
On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 1:14 PM, Rich Cooper
<rich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Jack,
>
>
>
> You write below:
>
>
>
> Patrick Durusau and I tackled the "who gets to decide" issue in an
>
> Ontolog conference call [1] in which we argued for a mapping approach
>
> that implies that virtually all choices are available, the final
>
> decision being left up to the user's particular needs.
>
>
>
> That is a great goal - preserving all the possible options for the final
> fitting of the ontology to the application.
>
>
>
> How do you document the options so that the final fitter understands the
> available choices? Given the open approach and its clear advantages over a
> one-size-fits-all ontology, a secondary issue is managing the spectrum of
> choices among multiple component ontologies.
>
>
>
> One approach I've seen to that issue for software components is the visual
> component library (VCL) originally from Borland, which comes with a
> moderately documented help file system. A more productive approach would be
> to match the application requirements and design statements to a suite of
> components using automated means, a kind of ontology CAD system that helps
> the user configure practical ontology components into operational
> application prototypes very quickly. That makes a short
> generate-and-evaluate cycle, leading to effectively leveraging the
> components while still in conceptual design. Clearly that is a useful
> secondary issue for ontologies as well.
>
>
>
> How do you forsee configuring of component ontologies into applications?
>
>
>
> -Rich
>
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Rich Cooper
>
> EnglishLogicKernel.com
>
> Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
>
> 9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jack Park
> Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2011 12:06 PM
> To: [ontolog-forum]
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Relating and Reconciling Ontologies
>
>
>
> To Ron's "just not possible", I would argue "nothin's impossible" but
>
> rather, highly unlikely.
>
>
>
> Patrick Durusau and I tackled the "who gets to decide" issue in an
>
> Ontolog conference call [1] in which we argued for a mapping approach
>
> that implies that virtually all choices are available, the final
>
> decision being left up to the user's particular needs.
>
>
>
> Jack
>
> [1] http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2006_04_27
>
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 11:12 AM, Ron Wheeler
>
> <rwheeler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> On 21/04/2011 1:36 PM, AzamatAbdoullaev wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>>> Given that, I am convinced that to obtain the General Semantic
>
>>> Interoperability standard, costing hundreds billions per year, means to
>
>>> develop a single world reference model, in the first place.
>
>>> Azamat Abdoullaev
>
>
>
>> Just not possible. Who gets to decide? There are too many stakeholders.
>
>> Each stakeholder will have trouble giving up a view of the universe that
>
>> has served their organization for years in order to fix someone else's
>
>> problem with this view.
>
>> We have survived an Imperial vs Metric world for 2 centuries with being
>
>> able to agree on something so clear cut.
>
>> We just make the conversions when we need to and the rest of the time we
>
>> pick one.
>
>> In Canada, we measure in metric but the frequently result is something
>
>> that makes sense in inches (plywood comes in the metric equivalent of
>
>> 4x8 feet sheets and no one has any idea about how big that is in metric).
>
>>
>
>> I have no expectation that the US Justice Department and the US
>
>> Treasury are ever going to agree on some definitions of financial
>
>> transactions.
>
>> The hierarchy of objects will probably never match and will be a problem
>
>> for the people who have to define the interoperability rules for
>
>> companies who need to take their own internal view of the universe and
>
>> provide views for the external agencies that fit their hierarchies.
>
>> Try telling the EU or the Chinese that they have adopt the US Treasury's
>
>> view of the financial world.
>
>>
>
>> Ron
>
>><snip>
>
>
>
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