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Re: [uom-ontology-std] UoM ontology standard - a proposed program of wor

To: edbark@xxxxxxxx, uom-ontology-std <uom-ontology-std@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Pat Hayes <phayes@xxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:22:24 -0500
Message-id: <98E8BD35-12A6-4BDA-BD41-478AE3E0AAD1@xxxxxxx>

On Jul 13, 2009, at 10:36 AM, Ed Barkmeyer wrote:    (01)

> Mike Bennett wrote:
>
>> That sounds great. Can you generate it from the output of a UML  
>> model?
>> How does it compare with what I've done at
>> www.hypercube.co.uk/edmcouncil which aims to fulfil that exact same
>> requirement from within UML but is by no means perfect?
>>
>> Mike
>>
>
>>>> [EB] The trick is not to be excessively geeky.  My late mentor,  
>>>> Dr. Selden
>>>> Stewart, once observed that all modeling languages are BLAs --  
>>>> boxes,
>>>> lines and annotations.  As long as you stick with class boxes/ 
>>>> balls,
>>>> association/property lines/wires, and text labels (annotations),  
>>>> you
>>>> don't violate the "anti-technical" prejudices of "business  
>>>> persons".
>>>>
>>> [MW] OK. If that is your objective then I will throw what was  
>>> originally (as
>>> far as I know) the CDIF (CASE Data Interchange Format) notation  
>>> into the
>>> ring. This consists of named boxes for classes/entity types and  
>>> named arrows
>>> for relationships/relations, where the direction of the arrow  
>>> tells you
>>> which direction to read the relationship name in (and nothing  
>>> else). So you
>>> could have:
>>>
>>> A --part of--> B, or
>>> A <--has part-- B
>>>
>>> My experience is that this notation is not only very simple, but  
>>> very easy
>>> for anyone to read.    (02)

FWIW, the COE Cmap visualization tool we developed draws diagrams like  
this automatically, given RDF or OWL input.  It also will compile back  
to OWL from a graphically edited or composed Cmap input.    (03)

http://coe.ihmc.us/groups/coe/    (04)

It works best on OWL-DL.    (05)

>
> Indeed.  Three points:
>
> (1) This is essentially the notation one sees in Protegé.  And you can
> clearly generate a very similar notation with a UML tool, by
>   a) making one end of the association non-navigable, and
>   b) naming the other, or naming the association by the verb
> This is in fact common practice for people modeling Java in UML.  The
> advantage of UML tools, including some free ones, over Powerpoint and
> Visio is that they generate a (more or less) standard machine-readable
> XML form, which can be converted to OWL, for example, with some  
> readily
> hacked tool.  (I already have 3 or 4 such things.)  The advantage of
> Protegé is that it can generate OWL and a proprietary axiomatic text
> form (which we could also hack). (Student projects)
>
> (2) I stand by my claim that the audience for the would-be standard is
> knowledge engineers, not business people.  If we lose sight of that,  
> we
> will find ourselves making a weak and deliberately inaccurate  
> ontology,
> because "business people don't understand concept X that way" or
> "business people won't understand such a complex model".    (06)

+1    (07)

> (I have
> recently worked with a group like that, and it wasted two years of my
> time.)  So the graphical model is a sketch of the ontological
> relationships, which should be _correct_, but not necessarily
> "complete".  We must stand by the Einstein razor: "We should make  
> things
> as simple as possible, but no simpler."
>
> (3) Matt doesn't mention the CDIF notation for "subtype"/subsumption.
> This is a foundational concept in OWL, and it is very important to
> modeling measurement concepts.    (08)

COE uses various notational tricks to encode subclass and domain/range  
information within the same intuitive class-node/property-arc graphic  
framework.    (09)

Pat    (010)



>  In particular, every 'measurement unit'
> is_a 'quantity'.  I would be wary of a notation like:
>   measurement-unit -- is a --> quantity
> because it makes the notation ambiguous.  'is_a' is a class-to-class
> relationship, rather than an instance-to-instance relationship (like
> 'part of').  It models an axiom, not just a relation.  That is:
>   A -- is part of --> B
> models a relation "is part of" whose domain is things that satisfy
> relation (class) A, and whose range is things that satisfy relation  
> B --
> a vocabulary item.  It has two free variables.  Whereas,
>   A -- is a --> B
> models a proposition, a statement: Every A is a B.  Formally,
>   (forall x) (if (A x) (B x))
> It has no free variables.  And the model asserts that proposition,
> making it an axiom.
> So I would object to overuse of the arrow notation, if it leads to  
> such
> an ambiguity.
>
> And finally, I did say that we need a language-selection committee.  I
> didn't volunteer to lead it, precisely because we need some persons  
> with
> more knowledge of the ontological Tower of Babel.  We seem to have
> volunteers in the persons of Messrs. West, Bennett, and Walker.  ;-)
>
> -Ed
>
>
> -- 
> Edward J. Barkmeyer                        Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
> National Institute of Standards & Technology
> Manufacturing Systems Integration Division
> 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263                Tel: +1 301-975-3528
> Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263                FAX: +1 301-975-4694
>
> "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST,
>  and have not been reviewed by any Government authority."
>
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>    (011)

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