If I recall, the original idea for the Semantic Web was not all-inclusive
ontologies but a collection of small ontologies that described specialized
aspects of the world. I think that is what Frank Carvalho has documented.
It is also very consistent with the work we have done in service
description. Our guiding assumptions are the following:
. There is no one "right" description for all time. Any template for
describing any resource is a snapshot in time.
. There is no single "right" description to satisfy all stakeholders.
There will be an overlap in what various stakeholders find important but
each stakeholder group is likely to have unique interests. Segregating
portions of description and allocating specific segments to specific
stakeholder groups will result in duplication and unreasonable constraints
on the use of available description.
. Different stakeholders may associate different values to a
descriptive property, where the values are concurrently valid. For example,
someone concerned with an OMB (Office of Management and Budget) form A300
will choose values for business functionality from the Federal Enterprise
Architecture (FEA) Reference Models whereas someone with expertise in the
discipline associated with the functionality will find a precise technical
term more useful.
. There is likely no unique use for any element of description.
Different stakeholder groups will use descriptive information in different
ways for purposes they find relevant. For example, the concept of zip codes
was created by the Post Office to streamline mail delivery but is now a key
for store locators for businesses, locale indicators for weather, "chip"
identifiers for map segments.
. Providers and consumers of description must use the same
vocabularies or have ways to mediate among vocabularies if relevant matches
are to be accurately identified. Thus, it is necessary to unambiguously
declare the semantics being used. This applies to both the properties used
for description and the values assigned to the properties. If the values
are numeric, it is necessary to unambiguously indicate the units of measure.
. Description elements and values should be reusable across classes of
resources. For example, color can be an element of description for any
resource where the idea of color applies, and the value red should be
equally applicable across resource classes. Value definitions may be
prescribed through well-documented taxonomies or other collections of terms
and relationships.
. Description should be concise. Long text passages are difficult to
check for exact matches and are difficult to keep synchronized across
multiple descriptions if a change is introduced as part of some use. A URI
used to indicate retrievable text is easy to compare and multiple uses of
the same URI remain synchronized if the retrievable text changes.
. There will always be a legacy collection of descriptions based on
previous versions of descriptive property sets and previous versions of
description values. The more success we have in getting descriptions created
today means more legacy to accommodate future change. (01)
The net effect of applying these principles is we can consistently describe
numerous resource classes using common tools, can generate new description
property sets leveraging what we learned from existing ones, and evolve
quickly and consistently as our experience grows. (02)
Remember, the best standards are not necessarily the ones that exactly
specify what you can do and how you should do it. Rather, the most enabling
standards nail down a consistent way to express and use variations that were
not conceived when the standard was first developed. (03)
Ken (04)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Kenneth Laskey
MITRE Corporation, M/S H305 phone: 703-983-7934
7515 Colshire Drive fax:
703-983-1379
McLean VA 22102-7508 (05)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bart
Gajderowicz
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2011 2:39 PM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: [ontolog-forum] SOA organised with RDF - Use Case (06)
I thought this post from Frank Carvalho was interesting as an
application of ontologies to keep dynamic data and metadata organized. (07)
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2011Sep/0167.html (08)
It's only RDF, but I find it interesting that a standard SOA ontology
is described as a problem. Instead each "type of metainformation has
its own ontology". (09)
Are standard/upper ontologies only practical for more expressive
ontology languages? (010)
Is this a unique domain-ontology that simply wouldn't benefit from a
standard/upper ontology? (011)
--
Bart Gajderowicz, MSc.
Ryerson University
http://www.scs.ryerson.ca/~bgajdero (012)
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