Ali, (01)
I'm not suggesting that an ontology replace a DBMS. I'm saying that the
information model offered by (say) OWL can replace the relational database
model. The ontology's information model might be implemented using a DBMS, as
Oracle and other triple-store vendors have demonstrated. (02)
The case to make is that the OWL model of information is more "natural" than
the relational model, so the application developer spends less time and effort
translating a business model to OWL than to SQL. (You could even argue that OWL
is a reasonable model for expressing many business information needs and
therefore requires no translation.) In my world at least, it'll always come
down to time and money. If I can't convince my sponsor that ontologies save
money, he'll lose interest. (03)
Regards, (04)
Steve Wartik (05)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
ali.hashemi@xxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2010 2:19 PM
To: ontology-summit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] Invitation to a brainstorming call for the 2011
Ontology Summit (06)
Hi Steve, (07)
Quoting "Wartik, Steven P \"Steve\"" <swartik@xxxxxxx>:
...
<snip>
> But back to the original point about the usefulness of ontologies.
> Ontologies compete against database technology, which: 1) is mature
> and stable;... (08)
I take issue with the framing of ontologies as "competing with
database technologies." If we accept this frame, then right there, we
have lost the battle to make the case for an ontology. While there
might be certain scenarios that an ontology could replace a database
system, I don't think this holds in general; and certainly not now,
given the gaping gap in maturity. (09)
The 2 points you outlined below make most sense to me, not in a
competitive frame, but in an ecological frame. (010)
> [SW] My conclusion, then, is that end users are likely to understand
> the benefits of ontologies well before programmers.
>
>
> What will be needed for programmers to see the light, in my opinion, is:
> ...<snip>...
> These are my priorities for convincing programmers. I'm sure you can
> add your own.
>
> Steve Wartik
>
> swartik@xxxxxxx
> (011)
The argument I've used (with limited, but notable success) with the
programmers around me, is that an ontology can also serve as a
contract between the software development team and each module. For
our system we use multiple ontologies, geared for different purposes.
And in the sense that it affects programmers, the analogy of such a
contract is much the same way that Java enforces a contract in the
implementation of a particular class (i.e. Comparable<T>). (012)
Given the above, it also seems useful to (simultaneously?) develop
views of the role of ontologies in the socio-technological ecologies
of industry. Some people might use ontologies just to analyze a
domain, others to design database systems or software systems, others
for... (013)
Fleshing out these different roles would be instrumental in helping
focus and identifying the different types of supporting arguments. (014)
Best,
Ali (015)
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