Dear Henson, (01)
Argument about huge legacy as a reason to plan future on a base of current
"de facto" legacy is not good even if we can label it with "pragmatic".
According this thinking we should bring formal semantics to COBOL and stay
with this COBOL FORMAL to eternity due to many years of status of COBOL as
de facto standard of programming. (02)
There are programming-in-the-small (one team, one computer) and
programming-in-the-large (web programming),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_in_the_large_and_programming_in_the
_small. There are different language patterns in these different kinds of
programming-in-the-*. I regard programming, modeling and ontologizing as
different facets of one discipline. Architectural modeling (with languages
like SysML or ArchiMate) is simply subdiscipline of this general discipline.
As a systems engineer I need language for arhcitecturing that support
modeling-in-the-large, where I every day assemble architectural work of many
people. Formal semantic for such a language is prerequisite, but there are
many languages with formal semantics. Which to choose? (03)
Most detailed answer I found in a book of Chris Partridge "Business Objects:
Re-Engineering for Re-Use"
http://www.borosolutions.co.uk/research/content/files/books/BusObj-Printed-2
0050531-with-watermark.pdf/at_download/file (while this book has no
references to UML or ISO 15926 or any other language or software or
standard). To have scalable for eco-system architecture (or any other)
description I need abandon substance paradigm (that is very intuitive!) to
logic paradigm (that is not intuitive at all, this is counterintuitive). In
another word I need architectural description not in objects-with-attribute
(object-oriented, like UML/SysML) languages but in objects-with-relations
(fact-oriented, like ArchiMate or ISO 15926) languages. (04)
We have difficulties when tried to introduce ISO 15926 in Russia: nobody
understand why they need something new in this Big Systems game (namely
Nuclear Power Plants and Shipbuilding industries). Now we start our "crash
course" of PLM integration with introducing of "Business Objects:
Re-Engineering for Re-Use". After this our clients knows names of
integration (in-the-large) problems they have and knows what can be
solutions (logic paradigm, not formal semantics for substance paradigm) to
their problems. Then ISO 15926 study is very easy: people understand what
theory behind ISO 15926 counterintuitiveness and why we need it. (05)
I consider that we need not only "good notation" and "formal semantics", and
"logic paradigm" but also a fair amount of documented ontology commitments
in an architectural language. I follow intuition of Conrad Bock et al. for
embedding ontology into architectural language. Also I am not rely on UML
approach to language (multiple diagrams, attributes) and follow intuition of
ArchiMate (http://www.opengroup.org/archimate/doc/ts_archimate/) in
architectural language definition. By the way, one of three intended
audiences of ArchiMate is "The academic community, on which we rely for
amending and improving the language based on state-of-the-art research
results in the architecture field". (06)
Why ISO 15926? It has a notion of system right out of the box. While SysML
have no notion of a system, sorry. I support position of Matthew West in
discussion about system component. There are many nuances about it in ISO
15926 community but all this nuances support engineering intuitions while
position of ontologists-non-engineers not supporting it. ArchiMate support
notion of system indirectly, via Services and Interfaces. I need more. (07)
There are many other examples of "formal semantics for bad language = bad
results", e.g. OWL. But this is another story :-) (08)
Best regards,
Anatoly (09)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: henson graves [mailto:henson.graves@xxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Friday, February 24, 2012 7:30 AM
> To: 'Anatoly Levenchuk'; 'Bock, Conrad'; chris.paredis@xxxxxxxxxx; 'David
> Price'; 'Fredrick A Steiner'; 'Victor Agroskin';
> Ron_C_Williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx; 'David Leal'; 'Ontology Summit 2012
> discussion'
> Cc: 'Matthew West'
> Subject: RE: INCOSE Ontology Action Group, onto SysML/UML
>
> Dear Anatoly,
> As I understand it you suggesting is that given the deficiencies of the
UML
> family languages regarding scaling to business eco-systems one should
start
> over. I have to disagree with you; the disagreement is pragmatic.
> What I see is that UML and SysML while needing improvement have become
> defacto standards in many engineering domains. This family of languages
is
> slowly getting a formal semantics, they have good tool support, and they
are
> being used on a wide scale. Further, OMG the keeper of these language
> specifications recognizes that the standards need improvement and are
> beginning to recognize that the languages need a formal semantics. There
> are several RFPs from OMG related to this. One of them is called
something
> like a" precise semantics for composite structure"
> The difficulty with scaling to eco-systems is not in my opinion a
language of
> UML or any other language; is a system engineering methodology defect.
> One has to develop and enforce some common terminology (ontology?) and
> some interoperability standards to expect to get consistent integrated
> architecture. this commonality currently exists in the CAD world and many
> multinational companies collaborate. Developing some commonality at
> least where things interface can work for use of UML in an eco-system.
The
> lack of this kind of hygiene is also responsible for even small projects
failing.
>
> Regards
> - Henson
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Anatoly Levenchuk [mailto:ailev@xxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2012 2:45 PM
> To: 'Bock, Conrad'; 'henson graves'; chris.paredis@xxxxxxxxxx; 'David
Price';
> 'Fredrick A Steiner'; 'Victor Agroskin'; Ron_C_Williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx;
> 'David Leal'
> Cc: Matthew West
> Subject: RE: INCOSE Ontology Action Group, onto SysML/UML
>
> Conrad,
> Thank you for pointing me to the right links for your works.
>
> I appreciate your ideas about adding ontology to product, behavior and
> project descriptions languages, especially architecture languages.
>
> I know that UML 2 and MOF are a big leap to formal semantics in MDA
> world.
> But for me this is not enough to enable UML family languages scaling to
> business eco-systems (beyond one enterprise). What is an object in one
> project appears as an attribute in another and vice versa (lessons
learned
> from work of EPISTLE consortium). There was extended discussion in ISO
> 15926 community that build on EPISTLE experience.
>
> I carefully see development of ArchiMate as a very successful
fact-oriented
> architectural language. There are no attributes in ArchiMate, and still
they
> have no formal semantics. Sure, they have almost no ontology features. I
> think that eventually they will have 1) formal semantics, will add 2)
ontology
> features (the two things that you provided with UML and OPML) and
> continue be 3) fact-oriented. I am wonder how many years 1) and 2) will
take
> (I guess no less that this was taken by UML).
>
> Personally I try to use ISO 15926 as an engineering ontology, but it is
not a
> language because has no good notations. My team is thinking about
> language workbench (http://www.languageworkbenches.net) supporting
> multiple engineering DSL on a base of ISO 15926 representation of
system-of-
> interest, systems in operational environment and enabling systems. Sure,
> most of this DSL will be established languages for specialty engineering
but
> we still need a good architectural language. Your work on OPML give us
> inspiration to continue think about fact-oriented variant of such a
language
> with strong ontology flavor and still usable by engineers.
>
> Best regards,
> Anatoly
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Bock, Conrad [mailto:conrad.bock@xxxxxxxx]
> > Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2012 12:46 AM
> > To: Anatoly Levenchuk; 'henson graves'; chris.paredis@xxxxxxxxxx;
> > 'David Price'; 'Fredrick A Steiner'; 'Victor Agroskin';
> > Ron_C_Williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx; 'David Leal'
> > Subject: RE: INCOSE Ontology Action Group, onto SysML/UML
> >
> > Anatoly,
> >
> > > Conrad Bock at al. had papers where they urge for "more ontology
> > > in product modeling languages" and suggest alternatives like OPML
> > > (Ontological Product Modeling Language, >
> > http://www.cesames.net/fichier.php?id=370) that go beyond UML while
> > > still not fact-oriented.
> >
> > Thanks for referring to this, but the link goes to a paper that
> > should
> not be
> > distributed (see its header), are you able to take it down? The
> distributable
> > paper is at
> > http://www.nist.gov/manuscript-publication-search.cfm?pub_id=822748
> > and slides at
> > http://conradbock.org/ontological-product-modeling-short-slides.pdf
> >
> > > We found that SysML is not as good to be a basement of overall
> > MBSE > initiative. We consider many other alternatives that more
> > fond of > ontology.
> >
> > UML 2 introduced significant logical interpretations that are carried
> over to
> > SysML. The above paper uses UML. A similar paper on onto behavior
> > modeling also uses UML (http://dx.doi.org/10.5381/jot.2011.10.1.a3).
> >
> > Conrad (010)
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