Dear David,
You were absolutely correct when you wrote:
How ontologies could add
value, I don't have a clue, since as far as I know it's a hard & fast
ontological rule that requires a term to have a single definition/meaning... an
extremely unrealistic constraint for this sort of ugly real world challenge.
[If I've got this wrong, please set me straight.]
I agree. And as I said in an earlier post on this
topic:
But the search for an abstract, anthromathomorphic ontology is,
IMHO, a lost cause from the beginning. All financial justification is from the
application up, not from the philosophy down.
That is why Dublin Core succeeded. It is small, very
simple, well documented, and matched by large hunks of examples that describe
document provenance within its limits. In that sense, Dublin Core is a new
legacy just as the software which interfaces with it might be a legacy
database.
My point is that small kernels of English knowledge (a
la Dublin Core) are similar in scope and complexity to the successful software components
which were so helpfully used as components within those legacy systems when we
built them in the first place.
Remember Delphi’s
component palette? Neat, documented little OOD chunks of code that could be
learned in an hour, used in many ways throughout a program (think TForm, TList,
TDatabase, …) so that we could leverage our development time to produce more
functionality in the same schedule.
If the specific words, names, lexicon for those small
hunks of code can be learned (which they often could), then the problem of a bottom
up set of symbols was much easier to handle than the top down insistence on
singular terms that so far haven’t even been well understood, well documented,
or well thought through yet.
But that is about as far as I see ontology going in
the next dozen years.
JMHO,
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Eddy
Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2012 6:41 PM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] What
goes into a Lexicon?
Rich -
On Feb 25, 2012, at 6:27 PM, Rich
Cooper wrote:
> Ontology
> designers that produce a well documented, highly
> learnable and usable ontology (i.e., something
> simple and down in the details of a domain) could
> provide a satisfying brick to many of those first
> time developments.
I am speaking in the context of the legacy software
systems that
enable our lives.
The language/lexicon/terminology/slang/whatever
already exists in the
applications. Unfortunately it's pretty much been put
together with
a single ended one-time pad... & that guy(s) has
left the building.
The problem is, unless you have the SME sitting at
your side, or lots
& lots of time, the terminology is very difficult
to grok. And when
you move to the next assignment, the
terminology/lexicon is very
likely to be different, so you have to forget what you
just spent 6
months learning.
I would likely argue that this language collection has
not been
accumulated with the idea of an organized ontology in
mind.
Imposing an organized ontology on this disorganized
language
collection probably isn't going be of much help.
But something that quickly shows or records or
suggests that in a
particular context "no" actually means
"id" (e.g. soc_sec_no....
social security "number" is not a number,
it's an index... a very
different beast)... now that would be useful &
likely to be embraced
by the grunts—application owners, analysts,
programmers—in the trenches.
How ontologies could add value, I don't have a clue,
since as far as
I know it's a hard & fast ontological rule that
requires a term to
have a single definition/meaning... an extremely
unrealistic
constraint for this sort of ugly real world
challenge. [If I've got
this wrong, please set me straight.]
___________________
David Eddy
deddy@davideddy.com
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives:
http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Config Subscr:
http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe:
mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To join:
http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J