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Re: [ontolog-forum] Solving the information federation problem

To: Paul Brown <pbrown@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "jamsden@xxxxxxxxxx" <jamsden@xxxxxxxxxx>, "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "simf-rfp@xxxxxxx" <simf-rfp@xxxxxxx>
From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:42:06 -0400
Message-id: <4EB0CA1E.1080602@xxxxxxxxxxx>
On 11/1/2011 8:04 AM, Paul Brown wrote:
> 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.    (01)

I certainly agree that much of the ontology is implicit in the data 
structures.  But I would add that it's possible to relate those
data structures to other languages.    (02)

In particular, I'd like to mention a successful application to
legacy re-engineering.  It involved analyzing COBOL programs that
were up to 40 years old and had gone through many modifications
and updates over the years.  The company also had documentation
of various kinds -- reports, manuals, notes, emails, etc.    (03)

The problem was to analyze both the programs and the documentation
relate them to each other, detect errors and inconsistencies, and
generate a glossary, data dictionary, etc.    (04)

A major consulting firm estimated that the project would require
40 people for 2 years to read all the documentation and relate
it to the software and the databases.  But with suitable computer
analysis, the project was completed in 15 person weeks.    (05)

See slides 104 to 112 of the following slides:    (06)

    http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/goal.pdf    (07)

(Just type 104 into the page window of the Adobe reader to jump
to slide 104.)    (08)

John    (09)


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