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Re: [ontology-summit] Ontology Engineering for Systems Engineering

To: ontology-summit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 20:37:47 -0500
Message-id: <4F4446EB.1090503@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Dear Henson,    (01)

I agree with your points:    (02)

> While (1) is true one needs (formal) specifications to judge deviations
> from. One of my current research projects is extending the kind of stuff you
> see there to specifications for product lines as well as approximate
> satisfaction of an individual system  against a specification.  Regarding
> (2) I believe that there is sufficiently developed engineering usage in what
> works and that it can be used to develop precise semantics for engineering
> languages and formal ontologies that engineers can actually use. Further
> this can be retrofitted with the languages that they use without any
> necessity of their changing how they work. Engineering usage background is
> well beyond the stone age as I am sure that you would agree.    (03)

But I'd also like to emphasize that these issues have been analyzed
and debated in AI circles since the 1960s and in the DB field since
the 1970s.  In 1980, there was an ACM workshop that brought together
people from three fields:  AI, databases, and programming languages.
Following is the list of speakers and their topics:    (04)

    http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/conf/sigmod/pingree80.html
    ACM Workshop on Data Abstraction, Databases and Conceptual Modelling    (05)

Pat Hayes and I were two of the participants.  Ted Codd was one the DB
people.  It was a great workshop with a lot of inspiring insights and
discussions.  I still have a copy of the proceedings in my basement,
but it's no longer inspiring.  It's disgusting to realize that we're
still talking about the same topics 32 years later without seeing much
progress in implementing and using those ideas in mainstream IT.    (06)

I like your point that this work "can be retrofitted with the languages
that [engineers] use without any necessity of their changing how they
work."    (07)

The reason why the Semantic Web failed is that the designers ignored
the issues about how their tools and languages would be used.  Instead
of integrating their tools with mainstream IT practices, they developed
"proactive" standards that had no connection to what anybody was doing.    (08)

Question:  How do you propose to address those issues?  What kind of
engineering usage are you planning to build on and extend?    (09)

John    (010)

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