Hans,
(01)
I think we can all agree. All models are wrong. Every model is made from some
viewpoint that determines what is important and what is unimportant to the
viewer. That which is unimportant will be omitted or described inaccurately or
downright incorrectly. The factorization of the modeled world itself depends
in part on the viewpoint. There is a an IEEE standard -- IEEE 1471, last
revised long about 2000 -- that describes these ideas, and their consequences
for concept architectures and model integration.
(02)
Every ontology is a model. It expresses a microtheory that corresponds to the
viewpoint from which it is created. The upper ontology folk have a somewhat
different view from that of IEEE 1471, in that they see the lower microtheories
being informed by a consistent upper ontology during their development, which
avoids certain viewpoint pitfalls, whilst enforcing the "context" of the upper
ontology and its commitments (witting and unwitting). But we also see that
having a common upper ontology doesn't necessarily lead to consistent
microtheories for human physiology, precisely because of differences in
viewpoint on specific physical structures that are not addressed more than
generally in the upper ontology.
(03)
The problem is that no one has yet figured out how to document viewpoint or
context effectively. It comes down to "how we were thinking when we made the
model". If you are aware of other views of the same space when you make the
model, you may document what you see as the principal differences and
commonalities, but you can only do that for other viewpoints that you have some
understanding of. I have referred before to Hyunbo Cho's "unknown knowledge"
oxymoron, which refers to assumptions that you are not even aware that you are
employing.
(04)
So, unless you have some newly enlightening proposal for "context
documentation", there is not much point in rhapsodizing on this theme. We all
agree that "context" is why microtheories for a domain can be self-consistent
but mutually inconsistent and still useful to their authors. But no one knows
how to document "context". The description of the context for a microtheory
will be made by the author and thus limited to his understanding of possible
viewpoints on the domain -- "the context for the context" (which sounds a bit
like Nietzsche, but it is more like "turtles all the way down").
(05)
-Ed
(06)
--
Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
National Institute of Standards & Technology
Systems Integration Division, Engineering Laboratory
100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8260 Work: +1 301-975-3528
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8260 Mobile: +1 240-672-5800
(07)
"The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST,
and have not been reviewed by any Government authority."
(08)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Hans Polzer
> Sent: Saturday, July 27, 2013 5:50 PM
> To: '[ontolog-forum] '
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Amazon vs. IBM: Big Blue meets match in battle
> for the cloud
>
> Until you start including a description of the context(s) within which the
> representation of entities applies, you won't get very far. Every legacy
> system has an assumed context and scope for what it does, and a specific
> perspective on that context, and specific frames of reference used to
> describe the relevant "world" from its perspective. That's why we have a
> "tangled mess".
>
> By the way, all systems are legacy systems - including the one you are
> designing this moment (from the perspective of the designer of the next
> system) - and no one will ever get the resources to redesign and
> reimplement all systems that do everything for everyone's purposes: live
> with it! Nothing operationally useful gets built without constrained scope,
> time, and resources, which limits the n-space of context ranges it can
> practically address.
>
> All attempts to define entities and relations in a context free/neutral
>manner
> as a solution to interoperability are doomed to have limited validity (i.e.,
>to
> those systems/applications that share their implicit context/scope
> assumptions). Only when we start being explicit about our context and scope
> assumptions within which we are describing entities and relationships will we
> be able to semi-reliably share meaning between arbitrary systems. So the
> first order of business should be an ontology for describing context and
> scope assumptions.
>
> Hans
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kingsley Idehen
> Sent: Saturday, July 27, 2013 12:35 PM
> To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Amazon vs. IBM: Big Blue meets match in battle
> for the cloud
>
> On 7/27/13 10:06 AM, deddy wrote:
> > Michael -
> >
> >> your example becomes more and more specific and challenging :-) Yes,
> >> if all you have is the code, you are in trouble and SW technologies
> >> are not a magic bullet for solving it.
> >>
> > Welcome to the world of legacy systems.
>
> By "legacy systems" you mean a subjective tangled mess rife with contextual
> fluidity?
>
> >
> > I hope against hope that somewhere in the SW stack of tools there just
> > might be something to help with understanding legacy systems.
>
> Yes, they help since "meaning" is critical to "understanding" anything.
> Thus, you can map out a tangled mess, rife with contextual fluidity, by
> decomposing the aforementioned mess into:
>
> 1. entities
> 2. entity relationships
> 3. entity relationship roles
> 4. entity relations .
>
> You can achieve the above with computer and human oriented languages.
> >
> > It's a very SMALL hope.
>
> I have big hopes, the challenge lies in getting everyone to look at the task
>like
> they would a jigsaw puzzle game where every resource is a puzzle-piece, as
> exemplified by the World Wide Web.
>
> >
> > What I do see is SW creating yet another tangled layer of undocumented,
> poorly understood systems.
>
> Of course not.
>
> >
> >
> > I've been attending monthly MIT SW meetings for 4+ years. Once, by
> > chance, I did catch TBL himself saying to the audience that "Semantic
> > Web" was a clever marketing label, but that in reality, "linked data" would
> be a more appropriate description since there really isn't anything special
> about semantics in the SW.
>
> Hmm..
>
> I think TimBL was trying to unravel the obvious fact that the Web he
> envisioned was a read-write global graph comprised of:
>
> 1. entities -- things
> 2. entity relationships -- statements describing things 3. entity roles --
> relationship roles e.g., subject, predicate, and object 4. entity relations
>-- sets
> of relationships scoped to common predicates 5. relation semantics --
> exploitation of First-order logic as the foundation for relation semantics.
>
> In the context of the World Wide Web, HTTP URIs would serve as the
> denotation (naming) mechanism for the items above.
>
> The World Wide Web was always about a global entity relationship graph [1]
> where humans and machines would be able to comprehend entity
> relationship semantics [2]. Basically, the fidelity or entity relationship
> semantics of this global entity relationship graph would evolve
>(continuously)
> over time via crowd-sourcing.
>
>
> >
> >
> > As you may have noticed, my passion is for a process—tool assisted,
> > but requiring human knowledge at the beginnings —to extract & make
> formal the MENSA_FL --> MEssage Notify Stop Action Flag --> "a collection of
> dunning flags"
> > process.
>
> We (certainly I) just need to find the right way to articulate that we (You
>and
> I) are on the same page. At the top of this response, what I outlined are
> steps that fall into your "beginnings" view point i.e., that domain experts
>and
> systems analysts MUST be key participants in the process. That's totally
> different from the typical pattern where programmers (short on domain
> expertise and industry experience) generally make things up as they
> experiment and play with the latest and greatest programming language,
> where the real focus is parsing capabilities, language idioms, and data
> representation formats etc..
>
> To conclude, we just need to align our own entity relationship semantics as
> we discuss these matters, en route to common understanding :-)
>
> Links:
>
> [1] http://bit.ly/10Y9FL1 -- Proof that Relationship Semantics & Linked Data
> were part of original World Wide Web design and proposal [2]
> http://bit.ly/16EVFVG -- Illustrating the loose-coupling of Identifiers
>(e.g.,
> URIs), Structured Data, and Logic exemplified by Web Architecture [3]
> http://slidesha.re/18CtxGK -- Blogic Presentation by Pat Hayes.
>
>
> Kingsley
>
>
> >
> >
> >
> > Does "dunning" have a German meaning? It means the process to send
> > someone a series of (increasingly firm) bills to collect a debt. R.G.
> > Dun was an early (1840s) credit rating business here in the States &
> eventually merged to become Dun & Bradstreet, which survives to this day.
> >
> > ______________________
> > David Eddy
> > Babson Park, MA
> > 781-455-0949
> >
> >
> >> -------Original Message-------
> >> From: Michael Brunnbauer <brunni@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >> To: [ontolog-forum] <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Amazon vs. IBM: Big Blue meets match in
> battle for the cloud
> >> Sent: 2013-07-27 08:50
> >>
> >>
> >> Hello David,
> >>
> >> your example becomes more and more specific and challenging :-) Yes, if
> all
> >> you have is the code, you are in trouble and SW technologies are not a
> magic
> >> bullet for solving it.
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >>
> >> Michael Brunnbauer
> >>
> >> On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 10:44:17AM -0400, David Eddy wrote:
> >> > Michael -
> >> >
> >> > On Jul 26, 2013, at 9:13 AM, Michael Brunnbauer wrote:
> >> >
> >> > > distributed in the heads of two experts for one or the other system.
> >> >
> >> > Let us assume the experts are not readily available...
> >> >
> >> > - I'm too green to formulate a coherent question
> >> >
> >> > - experts do not like to be pestered by clueless newbie questions
> >> >
> >> > - experts are simply too busy
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > The "knowledge" that has trickled down to me is as most technical
> documentation severely stripped of useful
> >> > context & content.
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > > once you have discovered that M0760 and MENSA-FL are the same
> >> >
> >> > That's the hard part... how are M0760 & MENSA-FL discovered to be
> the same?
> >> >
> >> > Remember, we're looking at a data structure with 1700 data
> >> elements & analysts/programmers are pawing over
> > this stuff on a regular basis.
> >> >
> >> > In theory there should be documentation... but situations like
> >> this typically come down to: "the code is the
> > documentation."
> >> >
> >> > - David
> >> >
> >>
> >> >
> >> >
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> >>
> >> --
> >> ++ Michael Brunnbauer
> >> ++ netEstate GmbH
> >> ++ Geisenhausener Straße 11a
> >> ++ 81379 München
> >> ++ Tel +49 89 32 19 77 80
> >> ++ Fax +49 89 32 19 77 89
> >> ++ E-Mail brunni@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> >> ++ http://www.netestate.de/
> >> ++
> >> ++ Sitz: München, HRB Nr.142452 (Handelsregister B München)
> >> ++ USt-IdNr. DE221033342
> >> ++ Geschäftsführer: Michael Brunnbauer, Franz Brunnbauer
> >> ++ Prokurist: Dipl. Kfm. (Univ.) Markus Hendel
> >>
> >>
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>
> --
>
> Regards,
>
> Kingsley Idehen
> Founder & CEO
> OpenLink Software
> Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
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(09)
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