Re: [ontolog-forum] is-part-of: a really, really, bad practice?

["David C. Hay" <dch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

John,

This is one of my major beefs with both the data modeling and the
ontology worlds.  Harry Ellis and Richard Barker, back in the 1980s,
have come up with the perfect way to name relationships. Since the point
of an ontology is to describe what is, "is" is the only
verb that should be the basis for a relationship.  Indeed, in the
data modeling world, optionality is important, so the verb actually turns
out to be "must be" or "may be".  

You are searching for the part of speech to use.  No, nouns don't
work, since nouns are already the subject and object of the
sentence.  We are trying to see how the nouns are related to each
other. Verbs don't work, since we are not trying to model processes,
here.  Just existence.  Let's see, what part of speech can we
use for relationships?

Grover in Sesame Street actually has it right.  Prepositions! 
This is the part of speech that is about relationships: over, under,
around, and so forth.  Think "Grover words". 

In Harry's and Richard's world, relationships can be expressed in strong
assertions, in the form:

Each [subject] must be|may be [predicate] one and only one|one or more
[object].  

For example, each PERSON must be son of one and only one MALE
PERSON, and each MALE PERSON may be the father of one or more
PERSONS. 

The Romans were the destroyers of Carthage;  Carthage was
destroyed by the Romans. (Since this describes the past, we can
dispense with "must be" and "may be". 
"Was/were" works just fine.)

And so forth.  

I've been using this structure for some 25 years, now, with remarkable
success in carrying out meaningful conversations with subject matter
experts in many fields.  I was amused to see the Semantic Web pick
up the idea with RDF a few years ago, although none of that group figured
out that adding discipline to the way predicates were formed could add
incredibly to the power of the ontologies created. 

Remember, these are ontologies being created.  They are
supposed to describe what exists, not how it came about. 

Regards,

Dave Hay
Houston, Texas

(I love it that "ontology" has become a 2500-year old hot new
buzzword . . .)

At  5/19/2013 10:30 PM, you wrote:
> On 5/19/2013 5:17 PM,
> jmcclure@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > I argue the industry badly needs consensus about the best
> practice
> > for how attributes/relations are to be named.
>
> My recommendation is to use the most common phrase in ordinary
> language.
>
> > in "old style" systems these names are nouns, perhaps
> qualified nouns;
> > in "new style" systems these names are, uh, something
> other than a noun.
>
> In ordinary English, it's common practice is to represent relations
> with nouns.  The syntax of English and other languages allows
> verbs
> and adjectives to be *nominalized* in order to refer to the
> relations:
>
> "The Romans destroyed Carthage in 146 BC"  =>
>      "The destruction of Carthage by the Romans
> in 146 BC"
>
> "The book is easy to read" =>
>      "The ease of reading the
> book"
>
> For words like part and family relations like mother, child,
> sibling,
> uncle, etc., there are no obvious verbs.  It's more convenient to
> use
> noun + 'of'.  In fact, English syntax makes it easy to switch
> 'of'
> to 'has' in order to form inverses:
>
> "X is the father of Y"  =>  "Y has a father
> X"  (or has X as father).
>
> "X is a part of Y"  =>  "Y has a part
> X"
>
> The nominal form is easy to modify as needed:
>
> "X is a proper part of Y"  =>  "Y has a
> proper part X"
>
> "X is an only child of Y and Z"  =>  "Y and Z
> have an only child X"
>
> This seems like a good argument for using nouns to name
> relations.
>
> John
>  
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