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Re: [ontolog-forum] Person Ontology Project

To: "edbark@xxxxxxxx" <edbark@xxxxxxxx>, "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "Larry L. Johnson" <Larry.Johnson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Chuck Allen <chucka@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Cory Casanave <cory-c@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:29:24 -0400
Message-id: <B958E6B1BCD5114789747469E80A8762A90BC9402F@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Jim,
I was also involved with the OMG "person" effort Ed is referencing and have a 
somewhat different perspective (which is not unusual for Ed & ).  My 
perspective is that there is a quantifiable set of reasons why this and similar 
efforts failed:    (01)

1: A structural approach
The group of people were used to defining CORBA interfaces or, perhaps, Object 
models.  The problem they ran into is that they could not "agree" on any 
particular set of properties of a person.  This is, in part, due to an 
expectation that the definitions of person defined a data structure rather than 
a set of possible properties that could be used, as required, in any data 
structure for any purpose.    (02)

2: Labels rather than concepts
Due to the same technology orientation there was a lot of concern about the 
"one true" name for things rather than accepting that there could be multiple 
names for the same concept.    (03)

3: Confusing people and roles
When stakeholders start talking about people they are frequently talking about 
a role that person may play.  Trying to join every possible role of a person 
into a single element becomes intractable and complex.  Separating role types 
from the physical person clears up many of these issues.  It also solves a lot 
of the "agreement" issues since roles come with some degree of context.    (04)

4: Data types not Units
As required by most of our technologies the types of properties are 
computational types such as "int", "Real" or "String".  Had they focused on the 
quantities and units required to represent properties of people they would have 
been able to encompass the different representations of numbers, dates, 
locations, etc.    (05)

Had the group focused on the concepts relating to persons and the roles they 
play rather than static structures with fixed names it is my belief that a 
useful outcome would have been possible.  They would then have been able to 
relate those concepts to the various data structures that represent people and 
the roles they play.  I am sure many on this list recognize these as 
differentials between conceptual and data modeling.      (06)

I would be interested in participating in your effort.  I am also participating 
in an OMG effort called "Semantic Information Modeling for Federation" (SIMF) 
to provide standards for conceptual and logical models with the required 
bridging relations between those models.  These efforts may be collaborative.    (07)

-Cory Casanave    (08)

-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ed Barkmeyer
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 10:34 AM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Cc: Larry L. Johnson; Chuck Allen
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Person Ontology Project    (09)

Jim,    (010)

I wish you good fortune, but I think you need a very careful constraint on the 
scope and purpose of the 'person ontology' to have any hope of success.     (011)

About 10 years ago, there was active standardization of many domain-specific 
models in the Object Management Group -- financial objects,  workflows, 
"product data management" (authorizations, assignments), medical information 
access, telecomm business info, etc.  
A friend and longtime standards professional, Larry Johnson, organized a 
"People Who Like People" get together at each quarterly meeting, with the 
purpose of getting all the views in front of all the viewers, and hopefully 
coming to some common base model.  After something like 8 meetings, we 
abandoned the effort.  It takes a lot of work to establish a viable common base 
model that supports all the viewpoint models.    (012)

Similarly, after 7 years of work and 20+ standards, the HR-XML consortium 
(Human Resources information sets) decided that for version 3 of the HR-XML 
standards suite, it was important to create a common base model, because most 
of the principal concepts had different terms and somewhat different 
interpretations in the separate HR-XML standards (because they were produced by 
different working groups at different times).  To the best of my knowledge, 
they are 2+ years into the effort and still struggling.     (013)

And these are groups that are/were modeling at the UML level.  If you want to 
put formal axioms into your ontology, it becomes even more difficult to get 
agreement.  There were only 6 views of the legendary elephant; there are many 
more views of 'person'.    (014)


Best of luck!    (015)

-Ed    (016)

-- 
Edward J. Barkmeyer                        Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration 
Division
100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263                Tel: +1 301-975-3528
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263                Cel: +1 240-672-5800    (017)

"The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST,  and have not 
been reviewed by any Government authority."    (018)



James Schoening wrote:
> Ontolog Subscribers,
>  
> This is an invitation to join an effort to develop a Person Ontology 
> to support the emerging  Personal Data Service (PDS) movement.  
>   
> PDS is a movement to enable individuals to gain control of their 
> own data and identities.  One emerging technical solution 
> (Higgins) includes a 'Persona Ontology' as part of their broader 
> identity solution.  
>  
> This project is based on the premise that a Person Ontology is 
> important enough to be a separate standard, developed and 
> championed by its own focused community (that's us).   Of course, a 
> Person Ontology is only one piece of the ecosystem, so we will work 
> with other PDS and identity innovators to ensure the pieces fit 
> together.   
>  
> A separate and supporting Upper Ontology is also needed, which will 
> allow vendors to extend their ontologies from the same Upper Ontology 
> that the Person Ontology is extended from.   This will enable better 
> data interoperability (and even inferencing) between an individual's 
> PDS and vendor applications.   This will not be an effort to create an 
> Upper Ontology for all purposes, but rather will start small and focus 
> on meeting bottom-up requirements from this use-case.       
>  
> Please review the Person Ontology wiki site at 
> http://person-ontology.org <http://person-ontology.org/>.   To join 
> this effort, subscribe to our mailing list by either sending me an 
> email or following the instructions at 
> http://www.person-ontology.org/how-to-participate.   
>  
> Regards,
>
>
> Jim Schoening
> Global Research, Inc. (non-profit)
> http://gri3.org <http://gri3.org/>
> jim.schoening1@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:jim.schoening1@xxxxxxxxx>     (019)


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