Dear John, (01)
> MW
> > For interoperability it is not another foundation ontology that is
> > needed, but a mapping between the different foundations that are already
> > found. These in turn can be traced back to the ontological commitments
made
> > in those foundation ontologies, and how those ontological commitments
> > translate in practical terms.
>
> I agree. But I would add that legacy systems are based on *implicit*
> ontologies, which are just as important as any explicit ontology.
> It's useful to make those ontologies explicit, but don't ignore
> legacy systems just because their ontology is implicit. (02)
MW: Indeed. And even explicit ontologies do not necessarily state their
commitments explicitly, and those need to be extracted too.
>
> Computers have been interoperating successfully since they were
> first lashed together in the late 1950s. Long before that, companies
> interoperated by punched cards, banks interoperated by hand-written
> notes since the 16th century, and don't forget cuneiform tablets for
> international commerce in 3000 BC.
>
> MW
> > You need perhaps a hundred or so concepts, so rather less than the
> > 10,000 you mention.
> >
> > The other good thing is that there is nothing to mandate. The mappings
> > deal with how different situations are dealt with under the different
> > ontological commitments, and they can be developed from use cases that
> > cover the usual difficulties. There are probably about 10-20 of those.
>
> I agree that a small number of concepts is sufficient for interactions
> at the level of detail from the the Sumerians to the Amazon DB schema.
>
> Engineers need much more detail, but don't forget that in 1969, they
> got hundreds of computers at companies and government agencies to
> interoperate in putting a man on the moon. (03)
MW: In integrating ontologies you need to manipulate them to identify e.g.
equivalent, disjoint and overlapping concepts. But I don't count those as
anything other than concepts derived from those in the ontologies to be
integrated. The concepts you need to do the manipulation are somewhat
limited. (04)
Regards (05)
Matthew West
Information Junction
Tel: +44 1489 880185
Mobile: +44 750 3385279
Skype: dr.matthew.west
matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/ (06)
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