John, (01)
Although you say you don't want to defend "silos", your subsequent comments
actually do defend silos. Just as "it is counterproductive for SW advocates
to use the word 'legacy' as a general put-down of systems that solve
mission-critical problems", it is equally counterproductive to use the word
"silo" pejoratively without ever really defining what one means by "silo". (02)
The fact is that almost all systems out there utilize local frames of
reference and locally scoped identifiers/names for representing their
particular view/portion of reality. That's just part and parcel of implicit
system-local context. Are we really going to insist that every insurance
company use only one standard definition for "policy number", to cite one
common example that has been used on this forum? Or one standard
"citizen/person number" for SSN aficionados? Will all institutional data
have to be made publicly accessible, with only network accessible security
controls limiting access to authorized consumers of that data? If not,
aren't we saying that silos are really OK, just not the ones that get in the
way of whatever I am trying to find out/accomplish? (03)
Isn't the issue really the degree and dimensionality of "siloness" exhibit
by network-accessible systems, to coin a term? Shouldn't we be talking about
the criteria used for determining which types of data model elements should
be "desiloed", and what constitutes desilofication for such elements?
Likewise, shouldn't we be looking at what context elements should be made
explicitly accessible so that the so-called siloed data can be properly
interpreted by those other systems that care to do so? (04)
The task we should focus on is not making silos go away - because they
won't, for the reasons you cite - it should be to enable silos to be more
translucent/porous, and more aware of their environment and possible
beneficial interactions with that environment enabled by more explicit
advertisement of local context assumptions. (05)
Another key point here is pragmatic scalability of interoperability.
Specifically, it is generally not pragmatic to have every system
interoperate completely (and correctly) with every other system in the
environment. Pragmatically, people, systems, and enterprises avail
themselves of third parties to facilitate interoperability with other
people/systems/enterprises in domains where they have little
expertise/understanding - and little motivation/benefit associated with
developing such expertise/understanding. Such third party systems/services
can provide essential interoperability between silos without requiring that
every silo make their information and services understandable and accessible
to everyone else. Commercial travel services such as Orbitz and Expedia are
examples of this on the current Internet - as opposed to, say, querying all
possible hotels and hotel chains directly yourself. (06)
I'm attaching a white paper I wrote on this topic for an Air Force Science
Board study on "Systems of Systems Interoperability" back in 2004. The paper
itself is an example of the general inescapability of silos, since it
probably would not have been given much credence by the target audience if
it had not used vocabulary and names that resonated with that audience's
context assumptions. As I like to say, this audience's use of, and reaction
to, the full implications of the term "net-centric" was that they wanted to
be net-centric, just not "that" net-centric! :-) Note also that I am using
the term "net-centric" as meaning the opposite of "silo-centric". (07)
Hans (08)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F Sowa
Sent: Sunday, September 15, 2013 12:50 PM
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Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] ONTOLOG community event planning and scheduling
session (09)
Paul, (010)
I agree with some of your points, but I'd like to qualify and extend others.
My major disagreement is with the word 'complete': (011)
PT
> Along with XML, HTML, HTTP, and related W3C standards, we have a
> complete suite of tools for delivering documents containing the
> information needed to the people who need it to act for the success of
> the enterprise. (012)
I suggest that you replace the phrase "complete suite of" with "useful first
cut at". (013)
PT
> I like Kingsley's "data-de-silo-fication" theme. (In fact, I'm soon to
> give an internal tech talk called "Down With Silos! How linked data is
> beautifying the information landscape"). (014)
Yes, but... And the major "but" is that context is essential. I don't want
to defend silos. But I do want to defend the three key terms in Tim B-L's
DAML proposal of Feb 2000: (015)
Diversity, heterogeneity, and interoperability (016)
Tim B-L in http://www.w3.org/2000/01/sw/DevelopmentProposal
> The Semantic Web concept is to do for data what HTML did for textual
> information systems: to provide sufficient flexibility to be able to
> represent all databases, and logic rules to link them together to
> great added value.
> ...
> The goal of interoperability between heterogeneous components that we
> build is one that will test the extent to which the Semantic Web is
> achieving its promise.The more diverse the systems interoperating, the
> greater the merit of the Semantic Web.
> ...
> The diversity of systems successfully interfaced to the Semantic Web
> will be an important indicator of success. (017)
There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all tool or notation for
representing, using, relating, or reasoning about any aspect of human
knowledge. The main reason why natural languages are so difficult to
analyze is that they have achieved the ultimate level of flexibility:
they can represent anything that anyone may want to say. (018)
There are also many important reasons for partitioning the Web and blocking
access, as TBL says:
> In the Semantic Web we can represent the whole range of policies as
> logical assertions using classical logic with quoting and some axioms
> about digital signatures. We replace the fixed structure of groups
> and accounts in the web server with a component that verifies
> assertions of the form... (019)
This is a critical issue that current IT systems handle with partial
success, but everyone knows that more is needed. But the current SW tools
have done nothing to help. (020)
PT
> One of the hallmarks of "legacy" systems is the unfortunate choice to
> closely couple these components. (021)
There are many good and bad features of current systems. But it is
counterproductive for SW advocates to use the word 'legacy' as a general
put-down of systems that solve mission-critical problems
-- especially when the SW toolkit cannot begin to address them. (022)
John (023)
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