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Re: [ontolog-forum] Person Ontology Project

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "Larry L. Johnson" <Larry.Johnson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Chuck Allen <chucka@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Gian Piero Zarri <gian-piero.zarri@xxxxxxxx>
From: Gian Piero Zarri <zarri@xxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 23:51:59 +0200
Message-id: <4E1CC1FF.1030901@xxxxxxx>
Dear Cory,    (01)

With respect to your 3rd point, "confusing people and roles", please 
find attached a recent  paper of mine at the last FLAIRS (May 2011). 
Regards,    (02)

G.P. Zarri    (03)




Cory Casanave a écrit :
> 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:
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.  
>
> 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.
>
> -Cory Casanave
>
> -----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
>
> Jim,
>
> 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. 
>
> 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.
>
> 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. 
>
> 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'.
>
>
> Best of luck!
>
> -Ed
>
>       (04)

Attachment: GPZ Flairs 2011.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document


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