Dear Matthew,
We may be using terms for what I called internal properties of ontologies, like consistency & expressivity, a bit loosely and perhaps mean the same or related ideas. Examples might help or reference to earlier authoritative discussions on this topic. Perhaps the 2012 ontology summit might have some material on this from - Towards Objective Metrics for Understanding Ontology Quality in Context (AmandaVizedom and JoanneLuciano. Amanda thus might want to comment further.
But I did want to follow up on one of your "defintional" suggestion:
MW:
By definition concepts only have one meaning, but there might be
multiple terms for them, which is what I presume you mean here, so this
is consistency again.
I wonder if this is clearly the case. I might take a concept like path and make the concept of sub-type of alternative concepts. Thus you might find that
Path is a Feature, feature is a spatialThing, spatialThing is a Thing….OR
Path is a spatialFeature, spatialFeature is a PhysicalObject, (DOLCE) OR
Path is a Feature, Feature is a SpatialObject, SpatialObject is either a Feature or a Geometry (as in the GeoSPARQL model)
Gary Berg-Cross, Ph.D.
NSF INTEROP Project SOCoP Executive Secretary
Knowledge Strategies Potomac, MD 240-426-0770
On Sat, Dec 8, 2012 at 3:54 PM, Matthew West <dr.matthew.west@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dear Gary,
The question is what internal properties lead to the necessary external properties?
I largely agree with this discussion of evaluating ontologies as information products based on their ability to serve IT system requirements.
This external view of use , however, make me a bit nervous about the absence of other factors, some internal, to consider in assigning quality to development of an ontology.
WWe often phrase some of these as - Does it correctly captures intuitions of domain experts as they express intended content (aka expressivity).
MW: This will be the property of completeness and relevance.
1.
We often say that a quality ontology's statements should be understandable to humans. Or we say that the ontology should be minimally redundant
MW: This is about clarity.
1 - no unintended synonyms
MW: This is about consistency.
2.Multiple possible meanings of concepts should be reduced so that systems & people can recognize commonalities and differences in the semantics of the concepts that they use. And so on.
MW: By definition concepts only have one meaning, but there might be multiple terms for them, which is what I presume you mean here, so this is consistency again.
Now it will turn out that such internal qualities will also serve the external needs as part of IT.
MW: Indeed, but those properties are important because that is what they do. It is actually surprising (to me) how few properties there are that turn out to be important (though ontologies do have many more properties).
SOCoP Executive Secretary On Sat, Dec 8, 2012 at 11:35 AM, Matthew West <dr.matthew.west@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dear John,
> I agree with all your points. I'll just quote the last line:
>
> > MW: So in essence it is all a matter of quality (fitness for
> purpose).
>
> The comment that triggered my exchange with Hans is the note by Steve,
> who said that evaluation is "more focused".
>
> As you showed in your note, evaluation involves quality, fitness for
> purpose, requirements, specifications, efficiency, cost, consistency,
> completeness, timeliness, accuracy, clarity, relevance, decisions, and
> processes in the enterprise.
>
> Those terms, which I took from your note, could be expanded further to
> include almost anything in IT, the enterprise that uses IT, and the
> employees and customers of the enterprise.
MW: Well at least any aspect of IT. Of course it does. It is the purpose of
IT to deliver information to the enterprise, there are technology layers
with information at the top, databases, applications, and ontologies in the
middle, and hardware, networks etc at the bottom (simplified of course). But
it all has one purpose, and any part of it can be judged in the same way:
how does it contribute to information quality.
MW: Ontologies are just a possible component in all this. Not an end in
themselves.
--
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