Absolutely agree re: W3C and standardization in general. That's always the
cheapest solution, when it works. Often doesn't, so what then? (01)
But...
> That's totally unsuitable for the tempo of military operations, and
> probably for almost anything else. Interoperability has been a problem
> for the military at least since Alexander, and probably much longer.
> The traditional (pre-computer) solutions have been standardization,
> regimentation, and a rigidly hierarchical data flow structure. (02)
I still fail to seen why what I said is unsuitable for anything else or
military systems in particular. What I'm talking about isn't particularly
hard, other than getting domain experts to collaborate with the domain experts
on the other side of each interface. They're all busy people so that's hard.
But not impossible. And the technology at each interface is trivial. XSLT
would do fine. (03)
To restate; adapters are what you do when standardization fails. Seems like
common sense to me, so I still suspect I'm missing something others see in
this problem. (04)
--
Work: Brad Cox, Ph.D; Binary Group; Mail bcox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Home: 703 361 4751; Chat brdjcx@aim; Web http://virtualschool.edu (05)
---------- Original Message -----------
From: "Measure, Ed \(Civ, ARL/CISD\)" <emeasure@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bcox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "common upper ontology working group"
<cuo-wg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <rick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 14:20:14 -0700
Subject: RE: [cuo-wg] White Paper (06)
> Brad,
>
> I agree with your comment on pure top-down approaches, mainly because
> nobody has ever managed to solve such a problem in a complex domain,
> much less in the hyper-complex domain under consideration. Your
> alternative, unfortunately, seems rather worse.
>
> Brad: "But mainly because people just don't solve ontology differences
> that way in the real (non-IT) world. They just buy a dictionary, or hire
> a translator.
> Problem solved."
>
> That's totally unsuitable for the tempo of military operations, and
> probably for almost anything else. Interoperability has been a problem
> for the military at least since Alexander, and probably much longer.
> The traditional (pre-computer) solutions have been standardization,
> regimentation, and a rigidly hierarchical data flow structure. I assume
> that the reason that there is a CDSI is the demonstrated failures of the
> traditional structure in modern operations.
>
> The most successful model we have for interoperability is the brain, and
> it features a rich mixture of top-down and bottom-up approaches to
> information integration. The biggest virtue I see to W3C, aside from
> incorporating that same idea, is that these guys are actually trying to
> solve real world problems, and have a proven track record. Trying to
> create a working system out of Executable English (or any other version
> of first order logic), or any logic, topos theory, or whatever, might be
> amusing but is unlikely to solve any real world problems anytime soon.
>
> If interoperability is a real goal, one needs to look at real world
> interoperability examples, and see where they fail. I don't think we
> can neglect the institutional problems stemming from a large number of
> competing groups each trying to create their own interoperable
> architectures, often for their own proprietary or institutional reasons.
> W3C may not have thee answer to this problem, but it does have an
> approach, and a philosophy. The approach incorporates two simple ideas:
> a flexible hierarchy of protocols and self-description for both data and
> protocol.
>
> Ed (07)
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