Re: [ontology-summit] Official Communique Feedback Thread

[Ron Wheeler <rwheeler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 19/04/2011 9:42 AM, Brand Niemann wrote:

Introduction

 

I am Brand Niemann, Semantic Community, and recently completed 30 years of federal services at the US EPA as senior enterprise architect and data science. I am interested in the role of ontology in semantic interoperability and the application of semantic interoperability to major applications like Federal Cloud Computing, Enterprise Architecture and SOA, and Knowledge Management and Computational Journalism. Mills Davis and I are restarting the Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice (SICoP) and are trying to do at least one activity each month – please see our Events Calendar at http://semanticommunity.info/#Events_Calendar . We look forward to collaborating with you.

 

Comments During the First Morning

 

There are two simple concepts expressed during presentations by the two major government-funded ontology programs (EU and US JPDO) that I have yet to hear mentioned as follows:

 

1.Ontolog Forum, March 17th, Perspective from the European Commission

SteveRay: Ah - good quote: "The need comes first, ontologies come later"

See Chat Log: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2011_03_17#nid2QHC

 

2. Ontology Driven Implementation of Semantic Services for the Enterprise Environment (ODISSEE) Workshop, April 19, 2011

 

Barry Smith: Too many ontologies are creating semantic silios, we need only one ontology per domain, and can only afford one.

And we only need one bank, one car company, one computer company, etc.
Very efficient in the short term but pretty soon innovation stops, costs go up.
If there was only one correct view of any domain, we would be able to cut the size of libraries down to a few shelves.

Organizations will settle on a limited shared ontology for a limited set set of transactions but will likely require a few ontologies that purport to deal with the same domain. A single transaction will be viewed in many different ways by various stakeholders (your bank, your insurance company, your customer, your supplier, the EPA, the Treasury, your legal department, your local M&A guru, etc. ). Each will impose their own ontologies on you and these will overlap.
Each organization will have to define the mappings between these ontologies and there is no reason to believe that any of your stakeholders (Congress, the regulators, etc.) will be satisfied with the view of the universe that the other stakeholders hold dearly.
 

 

See: http://semanticommunity.info/Build_TOGAF_in_the_Cloud#Ontology_Driven_Implementation_of_Semantic_Services.c2.a0for_the_Enterprise_Environment_(ODISSEE)_Workshop

and specifically Barry Smith at http://semanticommunity.info/Build_TOGAF_in_the_Cloud#Barry_Smith

 

and the summary slides I sent previously at http://semanticommunity.info/@api/deki/files/10494/=BrandNiemann04142011.pptx  

 

So there are questions of sequencing and number of ontologies that need to be addressed.

 

Grand Challenges

I think the Ontology Community should engage in Challenges and Competitions (not the Grand Challenge) especially say for health data. I have participated in three so far and have not seen any using ontology – see http://semanticommunity.info/Build_the_Health_Data_Infrastructure_in_the_Cloud

 

Brand

 
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