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Re: [ontolog-forum] Architectural considerations in Ontology Development

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: William Frank <williamf.frank@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2013 18:11:34 -0500
Message-id: <CALuUwtC+HiKUfuf9jmkGUg1r2VEU2wM0H-qx6H7mi+E-hBBqtg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Thanks.  I too say +4.  I have extracted the 1s para with attribution into my list of quotes that I pepper writing and talks with.  But I changed a few words, to make it shorter and sweeter.
.
By "do it right" I mean no more, no less, than the ability to apply the practices that one finds in any mature engineering discipline, which assure that I can meet a baseline of competence and that I might excel by my own efforts. And, in particular, assure that I will not fail in my engineering goals because of a dependence upon the practices of other engineers in any related corporation or industry.

This is not about the 'methodologies' that plague our industry and which have replaced focus on producing shared kinds of artifacts in common languages.


On Sat, Feb 16, 2013 at 2:30 PM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith <steven@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Dear John,

By "do it right" I mean no more, no less, than the ability to apply the practices that one might find in any mature engineering discipline and the assurance that in doing so I can meet a baseline of competence and that I might excel by my own efforts. And, in particular, that I will not fail in my engineering goals because of a dependence upon the practices of other engineers in any related corporation or industry.

For example, it seems to me to be a baseline requirement in software engineering to have one simple formal goal: That is the assurance that in writing an application the program and any data representation will be translated correctly to the machine; not only in the first instance but on any machine for which it may be translated in the future, that the tools I may use can assure me of this fact by some simple demonstration (formal proof). Further, that in doing so I am assured of precisely the same behavior and no side effects within or without the program.

Pragmatically, it also seems to be a requirement for a mature industry to be able to specify and be assured that any such translation also met certain minimum performance criteria and to be able to indefinitely preserve both the program and its dependencies.

More optimistically I would add the need to be able to readily transform a program from any one language into another for execution upon a standardized general purpose machine architecture.

I'll allow that there may be variation in the quality of engineering above this base level and I do not mean to imply that innovation in computing platforms, technologies and methods should stop - only that we are missing a foundation for an industry.

This is what I mean by "do it right."

It is impossible to develop incrementally future best practices and refinements, at any level, of any sustainable worth unless there is a maturity of this kind at least in the foundations of computer engineering.

I doubt there is a software engineering platform today, in active development, that meets this criteria. To do it right today I have to pretty much rebuild everything. The cost to "do it right" is only going to increase over time and we face perpetual degeneration, repeated costs, lack of reliability and security without this maturity.

Honestly, as prohibitive as it may seem, is not that hard to fix today given our experience - what we lack is long term vision.

I am against diversity, heterogeneity, and interoperability if it means - as excuse - that things get to stay as they are.

Best,
Steven

--
Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
http://iase.info




On Feb 15, 2013, at 8:15 PM, John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> All those points require a lot of qualification.  By "do it right"
> do you mean using today's "best practices" or waiting until a new
> set of best practices come along tomorrow?
>
> I like the three goals of diversity, heterogeneity, and interoperability
> that Tim Berners-Lee emphasized in 2000.  That strategy would allow
> legacy systems to continue running while the developers upgrade them
> by incremental changes.  It would also allow today's "best practices"
> to be replaced by incremental changes in the future.



--
William Frank

413/376-8167


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