Re: [ontolog-forum] Good ontologies without good tools are useless

[William Frank <williamf.frank@xxxxxxxxx>]

Yes,

UML based on a many-sorted higher order predicate calculus with Henkin semantics, and a simple upper ontology represented by the sorts  -

this is what we (Joauquin Miller, Kevin Tyson, and I) proposed for UML 2, in Clear, Clean, Concise (3C) UML

Communications of the ACM, Nov 2002, volume 45, no. 11 pages 79 - 81. 

"The Clear, Clean, Concise (3C) UML2 proposal makes the language
easier to understand and enables it to describe a broader
range of systems, from Web agents and services to entire business
communities."

This was never going to happen, at that point.  The agenda was set by Oracle and IBM, with no regard for the benefits to the long term future of systems engineering.   Also, I misunderstood people so much that instead of referencing the science, I simply explained the BENEFITS, and showed how simple it was to use this language, so I now suspect they thought this was some new off-the-wall approach invented by us three.  

I agree with all you say below, John, but add that an equally important feature integrated into a cosistent set of of UML models, along with the 4 you list, are state - transition models, the backbone, in my opinion, for precise behavior specifications.   Myself, I find UML diagrams, with my OWN simple simple common logic semantics, the most effective way to ensure a system consistency, because of all these integrated models.

Wm

On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 9:11 AM, John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

John M, Henson, et al.,
....

Just imagine how things might have developed if Guha -- who had been
the associate director of Cyc and later the chief designer of RDF --
had adopted UML in the mid 1990s.

Guha said that the reason why he designed RDF is that CycL was too
difficult for most users.  I agree with him.  But software developers
in the 1990s were happily using UML diagrams.  The UML notations,
tools, and methodologies can support

  1. Type hierarchies (the backbone of every ontology),

  2. ER diagrams (logical signatures and cardinality constraints),

  3. Activity diagrams (links between the logic and the procedures),

  4. Controlled natural languages (more readable than OCL for stating
     rules and constraints that go beyond #1, #2, and #3).

I admit that I'm making these criticisms with 20-20 hindsight.
In fact, I blame myself even more than I blame Guha or anybody else
-- because in the mid 1990s I was participating in ISO working
groups on standards for a conceptual schema (i.e., ontology).

At that time, I was proposing logic as the foundation.  If I had
proposed UML and points #1, #2, #3, #4 defined in FOL, an ISO standard
for ontology (AKA conceptual schema) might be mainstream IT today.

John

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