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

To: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "David C. Hay" <dch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 20 May 2013 18:58:49 -0500
Message-id: <7.0.0.16.2.20130520184321.038dcfb8@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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