David, you ask good questions. Thank you. (01)
Agree there is no such thing as a perfect label. My choice of
"commonLabel" was mostly to make a point, not to advertise a
particular ontological commitment. (02)
The term "automagical" is just a skosh problematic for me, for I don't
think there will ever be an automatic anything in terms of ontologies
so long as there are people with free wills, whims, and even nasty
streaks. (03)
I do think there are things we can automate, so long as we facilitate
dealing with conflicts, conflicting world views, etc. (04)
So, I see it this way: (05)
1- Ontologies bake in some sort of meaning, whether it's community
based, just some domain expert's view, whatever. Because of that,
there will be many such ontologies even for the same domain of
discourse. (06)
2- Ontologies are capable of being merged in lossy manners, much the
same way as the vast and continuously growing literature on merging
databases: hire some experts, invent a new schema, toss what goes in
in, toss out what doesn't go in. (07)
3- Ontologies are capable of being merged in a loss free manner, in
the way that topic maps suggest. Pick a subject from one ontology and
go see what entities in others are *about* the same subject, and then,
by possibly different means (depending on the goals), merge them. What
ever doesn't merge still goes into the topic map in which ever
"location" it belongs. (08)
My favorite way of merging topics is called "VirtualMerge" in which
you forge a VirtualProxy that accumulates all the identity properties
from all of the aggregated topics. It is then connected with each of
the topics through what I call a "MergeAssocation" which contains a
list of all the justifications (fired rules) for the merge. Doing it
that way, you can treat the MergeAssociation instance as an actor in a
structured conversation where someone wants to disagree (for cause)
with the merge. Similarly, people should be free to suggest a merge
through a built MergeAssociation, in which they list the reasons for
the merge. (09)
That approach satisfies a need I created to ensure that the social
remains in the system *without* affecting the expertise reflected in
the individual ontologies. That is: I separate domain expertise from
the map of that domain expertise, and leave it to the social to
interact with the map. It takes nothing from the ontology world, and,
if anything, makes it even more valuable. People are now able to
browse, pick and choose as they see fit, and even, in the map,
annotate, tag, and leave thought trails that lead to even new insight
that can, over time, migrate into the ontology world. (010)
I know. Snake oil, some might think. (011)
I hope not. (012)
Cheers
Jack (013)
On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 11:47 AM, David Eddy <deddy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Jack -
>
> On 2011-04-21, at 5:15 PM, Jack Park wrote:
>
<snippage> (014)
> Where is that ontological app that I can have on my iPad that will
> automagically sync with the 30 year SME to tell me he's thinking
> M0760 and let him know my MSTR-MENSA-FL is actually his M0760?
>
>
> This is where I loose how ontologies provide value... at least to the
> care & feeding of legacy systems (the systems that run our lives).
> What I hear here is an attempt to find the perfect, correct concept
> (name/label in my domain). There is no such thing.
>
> For 20+ years I've watched folks tilt at the "one correct standard
> name across the enterprise". Never going to happen.
>
> I posit that we need something that discovers the names/labels in the
> context of their native use (my SME having worked with M0760 for 30+
> years) & associate them with the other similar/like things.
>
>
> So far I have not seen any interest in the ontology world for this
> issue. Can ontologies be relevant to dealing with legacy systems?
>
> ___________________
> David Eddy
> deddy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> 781-455-0949
>
>
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