Re: [ontolog-forum] Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO)

["Obrst, Leo J." <lobrst@xxxxxxxxx>]

I’ve looked over the FIBO ontology in the past, though not recently. And it actually looked like a pretty sound ontology, all things considered. Does it have some clunky definitions? Yes, apparently. That definition of Thing did strike me as that given by a non-ontologist with a smidgeon of knowledge for those non-ontologists that have even less knowledge.

 

But if anyone has ever participated in a standards process, there are many folks involved who really want to contribute but can’t effectively because they don’t know enough, and so a lot of cleaning up is necessary. That’s why it requires real experts, including practicing and knowledgeable ontologists to provide correct input, and to help fix awkward or bad definitions, among other items.

 

So I’d suggest that the armchair ontologists out there actually consider assisting in the development of ontology standards such as FIBO. Believe me, FIBO is very advanced, compared to most of the “ontology” resources out there, and definitely is providing a strong service to the financial industry.

 

I would also suggest this shouldn’t be another opportunity to bash OWL and the Semantic Web. We must be focused on good content, yes, but also be pragmatic and effective.

 

Thanks,

Leo

 

From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Cory Casanave
Sent: Monday, December 15, 2014 3:30 PM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO)

 

A few observations about this thread as one who mostly observed the process of FIBO’s creation (i.e. I don’t have vested interest or ego):

- A lot of “ontological” time is being spend on the term “thing”, this seems unproductive. Notwithstanding discussions of the semantics of “that thingie at the top of most ontologies that corresponds to anything you can use or describe in an ontology”. To me “Entity” seems even worse, more baggage. As this is done in OWL, “thing” seems appropriate (However I agree the definition is muddled and seems to have enraged this thread). “Thing” is ancillary to FIBO.

-          FIBO had substantial contribution from several individuals who purport to be, and I think would be accepted as, professional and expert Ontologists. So how much of this is disagreement among Ontologists, how much due to “business experts” asserting how things must be for understandability, how much due to just running out of time to do more? But anyone wanting to pursue a major ontology would be discouraged by there being such fundamental disagreements among “the experts”.

-          UML semantics has nothing to do with FIBO – Highly profiled UML was just used as a tool to express OWL. Also, UML representation is NOT required for an OMG standard, however it makes the politics easier.

-          The business content of FIBO seems useful as a grounding for the terms and concepts of the domain. It is NOT intended to directly support substantial inference.

-          The intent of FIBO as a domain focused conceptual model got entirely muddled when expressed in OWL (or this style of using OWL). I suspect better representations would be appreciated. So, if you have a better way – take a fragment of FIBO and prove it!

-          I understand your weariness, change is HARD! Show the way.

 

 

From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Simon Spero
Sent: Monday, December 15, 2014 2:10 PM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO)

 

On Dec 15, 2014 12:03 PM, "Pat Hayes" <phayes@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> ...the basic definitions of terminology in those documents could not have been written by any minimally competent ontologist. They are nonsensical, as written. I have no outrage myself, only weariness, but after a decade of giving my efforts to the W3C pro bono, I am no longer willing to contribute to the greater good by teaching basic semantics to committees of people who are ignorant of the foundations of the subject they profess to be practicing.  Surely you can find *somebody* who knows the difference between a fact and a property, or between a set and an individual? Do you have anyone in your groups who understands the technical distinctions and theory underlying ontology design?

To be fair to David Newman, he is not an executive or board member of the Enterprise Data Management Council, and does not have control over their staffing decisions. It is possible that the EDMC may have hired a trained ontologist to review and remediate ontology quality problems, then released them when too many issues were noted.

I would also note that the OMG decided not to not take the output of the first FIBO Foundations Finalization Task Force (FTF).

The deadline for comments on the output of a second FTF has passed; I do not know if that work has been voted on yet.

The FTF 2 revised documents are here:
http://www.omgwiki.org/OMG-FDTF/doku.php

Simon

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