I sympathise with the war cry, "Total architecture is not a choice - it is a
concession to reality", for ontology is a full concession to reality. (01)
How any intelligent system, natural or artificial or extraterrestrial,
represents or "understands" reality. A trillion worth question. But let's
try. There are generally four hierarchical levels of meaning, modeling,
simulation, or "perception":
1. data (values, data points and raw data, symbols, signs of signals, or
stimuli, facts, observations, the web of data)
2. information (variables, as relational databases or metadata, giving
answers to "who", "what", "where", and "when" questions; the web of
information)
3. knowledge (relationships of variables, information as relationships,
schema, taxonomy, classification, "information federation", domain
ontologies, ordered collection of information, giving answers to "why" or
"how" questions; the web of knowledge)
4. wisdom (fundamental principles, patterns, rules and laws; intelligent
web, general ontology, universal ontology)
Ontology is the most powerful tool and algorithm the humans enjoy to
transform, structure or organize data to information to knowledge and to
wisdom, evolving as data models, information processing mechanism, knowledge
representation and reasoning systems, to its top level, fundamental
ontology, UFO, common ontology, upper level otology, etc.
Presently, most web ontology research at the initial levels of identifying
ontologies with data structures or information models. (02)
If one looks for a universal hierarchy of knowledge, it could roughly look
like as the specification/generalization relationships (universal class
partitions): Ontology > Mathematics > Logics > Physics > Chemistry > Biology
> Psychology > Sociology > ... (03)
Azamat (04)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Brown" <pbrown@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "AzamatAbdoullaev" <abdoul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; "[ontolog-forum] "
<ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>; <simf-rfp@xxxxxxx>;
<jamsden@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2011 2:04 PM
Subject: RE: [ontolog-forum] Solving the information federation problem (05)
When two parties interact for a purpose I think an ontology is established
as they agree on a language of discourse to be used in their interactions.
In a business-to-business interaction, the concepts of request for quote
(RFQ), quote, order, shipment, invoice, and payment are examples. For this
ontology (language) to be useful, both parties need to relate these terms to
their respective ontologies for running their businesses. Today few (if any)
parties explicitly craft these ontologies - they are implicit. Yet there is
much implied in the data structures that they exchange as there is in the
data structures that are used within each party's IT systems. I see some
benefit in analyzing these data structures and extracting the ontological
fragments they represent. There will be many holes, particularly in
relationships between concepts, but it's a useful starting point. I see even
greater advantage if we can then define ontological relationships and from
them generate mappings between data structures, particularly between the
publicly exchanged data structures and each party's equivalent internal
representations. There's real commercial benefit here. (06)
-- PCB (07)
******************************************************************************************
Paul C. Brown
Principal Software Architect
TIBCO Software Inc.
Email: pbrown@xxxxxxxxx Mobile: 518-424-5360
Yahoo:pbrown12_12303 AIM: pcbarch (08)
"Total architecture is not a choice - it is a concession to reality."
Visit www.total-architecture.com
Architecture Books:
-- Succeeding With SOA: Realizing Business Value Through Total Architecture
-- Implementing SOA: Total Architecture In Practice
-- TIBCO Architecture Fundamentals (09)
The SOA Manifesto: soa-manifesto.org
****************************************************************************************** (010)
-----Original Message-----
From: AzamatAbdoullaev [mailto:abdoul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Sunday, October 30, 2011 6:01 AM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Cc: John F. Sowa; simf-rfp@xxxxxxx; jamsden@xxxxxxxxxx; Paul Brown
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Solving the information federation problem (011)
On Saturday, October 29, 2011 8:42 PM, John wrote:
"But I would say that the representational types (and the schemata that
define them) are a version of ontology....
"Information federation is a problem of relating multiple ontologies." (012)
That's just right.
The matter was discussed about 3 years ago as "ontology federation",
"federated ontology system", "federated global
schema", 'federated ontology architecture", and "federated local schemas":
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2009Jan/0019.html
Indeed, novelties are well forgotten old things. (013)
Azamat (014)
----- Original Message -----
From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <simf-rfp@xxxxxxx>; "Jim Amsden" <jamsden@xxxxxxxxxx>;
<pbrown@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2011 8:42 PM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Solving the information federation problem (015)
On 10/29/2011 12:58 PM, Paul Brown via Cory Casanave:
> It occurs to me that there are two distinct notions of type that are
> relevant here: representational type (as defined in a schema), and
> ontological type, reflecting what can happen in the real world. To me, a
> representational type defines the aspects that are relevant (whether
> mandatory or optional) in the context for which the representation was
> designed. If the representational types are mapped to the ontological
> types that they represent, then these mappings can be used to relate
> representational types via the ontological types. This is Cory's pivot. (016)
I agree that the distinction is important. But I would say that the
representational types (and the schemata that define them) are a version
of ontology. (017)
To give an example, consider the ontology of Amazon.com, which would
represent real-world items that they sell, the customers who buy them,
and the suppliers that provide them. For each of those things, their
software would only use a small subset of the information about them. (018)
They would also require an ontology about time, space, and events
to cover the locations of their customers and suppliers, the taxes
for those locations, the shipping methods and times, the kinds of
events that might cause delays (holidays, weather), etc. (019)
But Amazon would also have an ontology of their business, the
software that supports it, and the kinds of operations for
all the interactions with customers, suppliers, locations. (020)
What Paul calls the representational type consists of the union of
the business ontology, the software ontology, and a very small subset
of the ontologies for all the real-world people, places, things,
and events that the business must deal with. (021)
This observation does not automatically solve the problem, but it shows
how the problem can be restated: (022)
1. Information federation is a problem of relating multiple ontologies. (023)
2. Some ontologies may have a very large overlap, such as the ontology
of Amazon's business with Amazon's software. (024)
3. But other ontologies may have a small overlap with the information
that Amazon needs. For example, a customer may be defined as a
human being, but only a tiny subset of all the possible information
is relevant to the operation of their software -- name, address,
credit card, previous purchases, etc. (025)
4. Using the same tools to format the information may simplify the
syntactic problems, but it does not solve the semantic issues.
Matching a supplier's RDB to Amazon's RDB is a nontrivial task. (026)
Sometimes, there are mismatches along the way. This morning I received
email from Amazon with a notice of a big bargain: (027)
> Maxell Rewritable DVD+RW (15-Pack)
> by Maxell
>
> List Price: $366.99
> Price: $10.57
> You Save: $356.42 (97%) (028)
A discount of 97% sounds very good, but there was undoubtedly some
mistake with the list price. (029)
By the way, anybody who is looking for realistic use cases for
information federation and ontology merging should look at the
Amazon specifications. They are publicly available, and the task
of matching a supplier's software to the Amazon schema takes a
considerable amount of time and effort. (030)
John (031)
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