David,
As you know human artifacts turn out to be useful for purposes which their
designers never imagined or intended, in this case I am speaking of both UML
and OWL. (01)
The basis for my experiment was that I wanted to see how suitable UML/SysML
was for chemistry and biomedical applications. I am aware of how OWL and
extensions have been used in this arena. My take away from the experiment of
building a water molecule in SysML is that UML is very suitable for these
applications. The experiment also helped me pinpoint where UML/SysML lacked
DL expressivity that is really needed in UML/SysML. (02)
Regarding OWL it sounds like you also have the view that it is for use only
by ontologists to do whatever they do and by software engineers, but not
system engineers. Indeed many OWLites may think this way. My earliest
interest in OWL, following your lead, was to find out if OWL could be used
for engineering purposes. The answer is that it makes good sense, but there
are some limitations. The initial result of this inquire is a paper with
Ian Horrocks, entitled Application of OWL 1.1 to Systems Engineering. Pros
and cons are discussed. (03)
Back to the water molecule it is very interesting to compare the results in
both languages. Both results are partial due to limitations on both
languages. My reason for doing the experiment was exactly to sort out these
issues, not advocate for one religion or the other. I hope, based on these
comments, you can understand why I would do the experiment. Am I free to
quote that you cannot imagine why I would do such an experiment when I
publish the paper. (04)
I don't think that your proposed comparison is the correct one. (05)
- Henson (06)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Price
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 5:01 AM
To: ontology-summit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] INCOSE Ontology Action Group, onto SysML/UML (07)
On 3/6/2012 4:10 AM, John F. Sowa wrote:
> On 3/5/2012 3:36 PM, henson graves wrote:
>> I personally have tasked two
>> engineers with similar capability to build a model of the molecule
>> Water in SysML and in OWL. Take a guess about the results. Also guess
>> how well it can be done in either of these languages or other candidates. (08)
I don't understand why one would do that. SysML is a tool designed for use
by systems engineers, not chemists, and OWL is a language for use by
ontologists and software developers. A more accurate comparison would be to
have them design something 'engineery' in SysML vs SQL or the SysML
meta-model or OWL. Few, if any, systems engineering applications would
present OWL to an engineer as OWL. (09)
> I'm sure that engineers can learn UML or SysML much faster and use it
> more effectively and more accurately than OWL. But since you did the
> experiment, I'd like to hear any further details you observed. Did
> you write a report about them?
>
> And I'd also like to hear the opinions of the engineers about which
> tool(s) they would prefer to use and why. (010)
'Engineers' is far too general a term to answer this question.
Mechanical engineers want to see 3D solid models, EEs want to see circuit
diagrams, stress or thermal engineers want to see colorful visualizations
that highlight problem areas, product management/maintenance engineers want
to see tree-like breakdowns of products and related processes, chemical
engineers want to see compound structure diagrams, etc. (011)
OWL is just plumbing no discipline engineer would ever see, unless your
discipline happens to be ontology/software engineering and so you're working
directly with the pipes. (012)
>
>> I personally am convinced that HOL in the form of type theory will
eventually
>> win out, but this is pretty much irrelevant to putting a stake in the
ground
>> with respect to achieving tech transfer. As you have stated start
wherever
>> you want, as long as where you start can be given a formal semantics.
> I agree. But I would avoid using the term "win out" with respect to any
> particular notation.
>
> As I said before, I believe that semantic systems need to support
> "anything and everything". That would include the Semantic Web tools
> and many different variations of graphic and linear notations. Then
> people with different backgrounds can view the common semantics in
> their preferred notations, and they can use notations that are tailored
> to their requirements. (013)
Exactly! Users of an onotology-based application, be it based in OWL or
HOL, would likely never have that fact made visible to them. We should
remember that ontologies are the tail, not the dog, and the goal is to
provide a way for software projects to produce better, more semantically
accurate applications. It's the applications that typically bring
business value though, not the ontology. (014)
Cheers,
David (015)
>
> John
>
>
>
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