Dear Hans,
You wrote:
But
Rich, the economics are different for single system owners/managers, which is
why there is a market for data import/export middleware and data adaptor
providers and for third party data integrators/aggregators.
It seems
to me that the market for middleware providers and integrators is based on
labor, tools and training which these providers have honed through repeated
use. An occasional export project by the single owner doesn’t provide
as much experience, and therefore doesn’t get the same learning
advantage. But I think you are pointing out something related to
ontology; I just don’t quite get your point yet.
I don’t
follow what you mean by “the economics are different for single system
owners”. Perhaps you mean that the single system owner doesn’t
export/import as often, therefore doesn’t have the honed skill set among
its staff. Is that what you meant?
If so, I
still hold that the cost of hiring the export/import contractor is a one time thing
and simple tuning of one export/import project is usually enough for the second
project.
Look
at Orbitz and Travelocity, and the fact that they haven’t eliminated
individual hotel, airline, or rental car web sites/services, but still make
money and have a significant segment of the market.
Sorry, I
am not familiar with either of those sites. Perhaps you mean that they
handle importing travel info of various types and exporting travel commitments
of various types. Certainly there are other examples. AutoByTel and
Dealix both interface with car dealerships and provide a shopping service to
prospective car buyers. But how is this related to ontology? I am
still missing your intended point.
Yet
we have Southwest declaring in its ads that you can only buy a Southwest ticket
from Southwest as a discriminator!!
Southwest doesn’t sell through
Orbitz or Travelocity? Since I let my daughter book my travel
arrangements, and I avoid traveling as much as possible, I’m not aware of
this. But I suppose it’s because the discounts Orbitz and
Travelocity want in exchange for leads are too high. Just a guess, but
again I don’t see the connection with ontology. Please explain a
little more.
-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 Hans Polzer
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2012
9:01 AM
To: '[ontolog-forum]
'
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] What goes into a Lexicon?
But Rich, the
economics are different for single system owners/managers, which is why there
is a market for data import/export middleware and data adaptor providers and
for third party data integrators/aggregators. Look at Orbitz and Travelocity,
and the fact that they haven’t eliminated individual hotel, airline, or
rental car web sites/services, but still make money and have a significant
segment of the market. Yet we have Southwest declaring in its ads that you can
only buy a Southwest ticket from Southwest as a discriminator!!
Hans
From:
ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rich Cooper
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2012
11:40 AM
To: '[ontolog-forum]
'
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] What goes into a Lexicon?
Dear Matthew,
You are saying that, since it is too
expensive to do for 1+1 systems, lets do it for thousands? That’s
like saying lets lose a little money on each sale, but make it up in volume!
My experience is that if one DB is
programmed to export data to company X, then that same export will be
considered when a second company Y has to be fed data. The incremental
cost of adding a new export routine is only paid once, and the format of the
export becomes the standard. There is no need to do it differently for
the next company, for the most part.
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
Dear Rich,
Thanks for the description of the example
nuclear reactor. But I still question the value of adding the task of
making an ontology, instead of just exporting data from a thirty year old
system without the ontology step.
MW: I probably would
not do it for just one system to one other system either. But how about for
some hundreds of systems to some hundreds of other systems, where each system
interfaces to on average 10 other systems. Oh, and it is not just one company
that you are doing this for, but a whole industry. Much of the problem is
supply chain related, where data is transferred e,g, from equipment suppliers
to design contractors, to construction contractors, to owner operators, to
maintenance contractors, to decommissioning contractors. Does each party in
that chain want to have a bespoke way of exchanging information with each other
party, or is it better to have one way to communicate?
How many times do
you want to solve the same problem before you try to look for a shared
solution?
In general, when I have to move data from
one system to another, I just move the SQL tables, columns, domains (where
compatible), views and (where necessary) stored procedures. Why would it
be useful to first define an ontology for that thirty year old system?
What benefits would the company get from adding that apparently unnecessary
task to the activity of moving data from one system to another? If there
is no benefit, no company would include it. So in your example, there has
to be some benefit above and beyond data transfer. Could you please explain
what benefit it might be to add the ontology task to taking data and/or
software from a thirty year old reactor? You must have something in mind,
but I am not following the rationale just yet.
MW: What the
ontology gives you is a shared language that each system can translate
into and out of, rather than having a distinct way to do it for each pair of
system and company.
Regards
Matthew
West
Information
Junction
Tel: +44 1489
880185
Mobile: +44 750
3385279
Skype:
dr.matthew.west
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Moving data from one RDBMS to another is
just not that hard. The problem is in understanding the data that people
have actually typed into the database over the last thirty years.
Different people put in different text descriptions all the time.
An ontology would have to enforce strong
data typing of columns to be able to do any inference, but the data typing is
just not there in thirty year old systems. Furthermore, adding that
strong type checking at the data entry point is, for most systems, not productive
use of labor, and in many cases, makes performance so sluggish as to impact the
systems fitness for use.
Thanks for keeping at it though; I really
am trying to find some value in compensation for the cost of constructing the
ontology before transferring data. I just don’t follow that
argument yet. It doesn’t fit my experience with systems, whether
legacy or new. Please continue to explain it.
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
Dear Rich,
The problem is not
working on 30 year old code. That probably stopped years ago, and the software
would have been abandoned if it did not work, so it is of sufficient quality
doing something rather mundane, that it does not need working on. The problem
is how do you get the data out of this system and into the systems you need to
decommission and deconstruct your nuclear reactor? How would you know how to
interpret anything you could get out? The same would apply if you were going to
replace the software of course.
You are not trying
to tack ontologies on top. Unless you had developed an ontology 30 years ago,
you would not have captured the semantics of the system outside the heads of
those that did the development, so you would not have access to those
semantics. So you need to develop an ontology of a system so that at some
later date you can make use of the data in ways that were not anticipated when
the system was built.
Regards
Matthew
West
Information
Junction
Tel: +44 1489
880185
Mobile: +44 750
3385279
Skype:
dr.matthew.west
matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.informationjunction.co.uk/
http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/
This email
originates from Information Junction Ltd. Registered in England and
Wales No. 6632177.
Registered office:
2 Brookside, Meadow Way,
Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire,
SG6 3JE.
Dear Matthew,
My advice to anyone working on programs
that were written thirty years ago is to find another job. The technology
is outdated, the tools have become much, much better, languages are more
expressive, and subsystems can be licensed far more effectively now. My
advice to managers who have a thirty year old software system of significant
size is to muddle along as best they can while building an entirely new replacement
using modern technology.
The only value in creaking along with
thirty year old technology is in hoping it will go away soon and be replaced by
something more functional.
In any case, the sunk cost of that 30 year
old project has no current value other than avoiding replacement costs.
So why try to tack ontologies on top of something with a very limited
lifespan? I see ontologies, if they have a place at all, as newly
emerging solutions to yet unidentified problems. Our concern should be to
identify exactly which kinds of problems can be solved with ontologies.
Only then will they have clear value.
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
Dear Rich,
My experience in software development in
teams is that the vocabulary used is absolutely essential to the two
programmers discussing their current issue of interfacing with each
other. Whether other programmers use the same word or not isn’t
significant to them; they are not writing programs to be readable until
possibly after the said programs actually work. So the problem is already
solved before any ontology is used, dictated, or agreed to. Then
there’s time to adjust words to fit some manager’s choice of
vocabulary, but that is AFTER the problem of a working program has already been
solved.
And what about the
situation when program A was written 30 years ago to support a nuclear power
plant, the writer of which has since died, and the writer of the second
programme now has to write interfaces to programs needed to decommission that
nuclear power plant over the next 20 years.
Regards
Matthew
West
Information
Junction
Tel: +44 1489
880185
Mobile: +44 750
3385279
Skype:
dr.matthew.west
matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.informationjunction.co.uk/
http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/
This email
originates from Information Junction Ltd. Registered in England and
Wales No. 6632177.
Registered office:
2 Brookside, Meadow Way,
Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire,
SG6 3JE.