I couldn't agree more with this: (01)
>>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 mappi
>ngs between data structures, particularly between the publicly exchanged
>data structures and each party's equivalent internal representations.
>There's real commercial benefit here. (02)
One issue that has perplexed a few beginners is the structure affecting
semantics. Presuming we could all agree on the meaning of a data element
that is used for the "First name of a company contact", it would appear on
the surface that we have solved a problem. EDIFACT and OAGIS both took
this approach and it has many benefits. The issue comes when the data
transferred is structured differently. In Xpath terms, the data contained
within the hierarchy: (03)
//PurchaseOrder/BuyerParty/@FirstNameOfContact (04)
Is semantically different from (05)
//PurchaseOrder/SellingParty/@FirstNameOfContact (06)
The mapping between a hierarchy and a structured text file like EDI is
difficult to document when you want to preserve the more subtle nuances of
pragmatics. (07)
Duane (08)
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