Dear David,
That is my experience also. Choosing
names that a large number of team members can relate to is a difficult
problem. So it isn’t too surprising that “Postal Code” and “Zip Code” as
partial synonyms abound, even today. I worked in the software engineering
division of Hughes Fullerton – about 1,000 employees, mostly SW engineers and
administrators – and saw this phenomenon in every project, of which there were
dozens if not hundreds.
But when I said “I haven’t heard of an ontology project of large size”, I meant one which used a true ontology instead of just a data
dictionary, which was not a solution to the problem then either. The DD is
useful for cleaning up a project after all the problems have been solved, and
the program had to be shipped to the maintenance team. But it only added to
the cost of development and didn’t solve development problems; it was
considered good maintenance practice only.
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Eddy
Sent: Wednesday, February 29, 2012
10:29 AM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] What goes into a Lexicon?
Rich -
On Feb 29, 2012, at 1:16 PM, Rich Cooper
wrote:
I haven’t heard of an ontology project of large size
I an add a smidge of background context from this side of the pond.
I have no direct knowledge on the level of contact between the Shell
Oil (Houston) I had as customer in the late 1980s & Shell (London). My assumption from experience
is that large organizations have significant
coordination/communication/collaboration challenges.
In the late 1980s, CASE tool was not a four letter word. Shell (Houston) used several
data modeling (CASE) tools.
They also had at least two (likely 3 now) central data dictionaries
(aka "metadata repository").
The challenge we danced with was:
Model A is done.
These efforts are NOT coordinated.
At some point A & B are "merged."
The challenge was (and still is, as far as I know)... how do I get
"Postal Code" & "Zip Code" to collide as
potential/probable synonyms?
At the time "naming conventions" or "naming
standards" (there's a HUGE difference) were in fashion. Taxonomy
& ontology were, AFAIK not associated with this issue.