CDSI WG, (01)
Jim Hendler (the Semantic Web guru) provided the below comments to the
attached paper. (02)
We'll soon resolve all his technical comments, but let's first address
his bottom line (found in last message): (03)
"I think the bottom line is that I buy your argument if you
were saying current
technology defined as DL reasoners manipulating OWL assertions,
but that's not
what the Semantic Web is all about, and the URI-based reference
mechanism
coupled with the standard for KR and other aspects is aimed
exactly at scalability." (04)
Request: Let's more than one of us try to explain what he refers to as
"URI-based reference mechanism coupled with the standard for KR." (05)
Jim Schoening
U.S. Army C-E LCMC CIO/G6 Office
Voice: DSN 992-5812 or (732) 532-5812
Fax: DSN 992-7551 or (732) 532-7551
Email: James.Schoening@xxxxxxxxxxx (06)
----------------------------------------------------------
At 5:35 PM -0500 1/29/07, Jim Hendler wrote [to Jim Schoening]: (07)
>James - Interesting paper, fwiw, I couldn't disagree more. You
>make the mistake, which is common and being pushed by a number of
>strong players <<snip>>, of assuming that only with some kind of common
>semantic model can data be integrated - problem is the same argument
>you use as to why this is so (the scaling arguments) were very similar
>to the arguments made on why the WWW wouldn't work a decade or so ago.
>Think of it this way - if I coudl create a set of local mappings across
>a wide array of linked (but not all linked) data sources then I could
>indeed do cross domain integration - not with full fidelity - but
>that's where your mistake lies - when I ask Google to find things, I
>don't care if it finds all and only the right thing - I want it to take
>me closer to a correct starting point for exploration, and I don't
>demand (or in fact want) 100%
>precision or recall. I don't have time for details,
> <<snip>>
> -JH (08)
------------------- (09)
At 10:33 AM -0500 1/30/07, Jim Hendler wrote [to SICoP]: (010)
>I guess I should mention here something I told the author separately -
>I don't agree with many of the conclusions of this paper, and think
>there are some flaws - I don't have time for a detailed response - but
>let me point out that if you made this same argument by analogy for
>hypertext systems (lack of standards, disagreement in worlds views,
>different technologies) then you could clearly demonstrate that a world
>wide web of billions of documents linked to each other to be used in
>multiple contexts would be impossible (how would you find anything??) -
>the analogy isn't perfect, and there are some valid points made in the
>paper - but it buys way too heavily into the assumption that no
>integration can take place without complete (and consistent) semantic
>agreement - and that's the part I cannot agree with, that doesn't
>appear to be true in practice, and that has been being used by many
>critics from the traditional ontology space (where that assumption is
>made) to argue that you can't do data integration at a large scale with
>the approaches we're exploring. I've said this many
>times in many contexts - Tim Berners-Lee (who never listened to those
>skeptics who explained why the Web wouldn't work) and Eric Miller and I
>addressed this issue in some degree in the paper at [1] ad of course
>I've written and talked a lot about this. So before you all throw out
>the baby with the bathtub, I thought I would mention that there are
>contradicting views
> -Jim H
>p.s. Actually, probably the best argument I made as to why we couldn't
>ever succeed with any kind of "everyone must agree" (standard upper
>ontology) approach was in the original brief to the Director where I
>convinced DARPA to invest in the DAML program - so this isn't
>something new, and those who've heard me at the Semantic Web in E-gov
>conferences have heard this argument.
>
>[1] http://www.w3.org/2002/07/swint (011)
------------------------ (012)
At 1:12 PM -0500 1/30/07, Jim Hendler wrote [to Jim Schoening]: (013)
basically same thing basic argument as I put on the list, but a little stronger
in my comments on upper ontology... Sorry to weigh in so strong, but I think
you really missed a lot of the point of the Sem Web technologies and how they
were designed precisely to provide the capabilities you say they don't. I
certainly don't think they are the be-all and end-all, but they move us much
further than you give them credit for - part of the problem is you completely
miss the key aspect of these languages as opposed to previous AI languages,
which is the URI basis - they are "webized" in a deep and important way - the
linking of concepts (where ontologies can link to concepts in others) provides a
mechanism you've largely missed. I realize I
had the opportunity to weigh in to some of this stuff in SICOP, but I've had
the debate with Leo and others ongoing for the past 6 years and they still
haven't gotten it and I get tired of having the same arguments over and over.
The good news is the large players are beginning to get it (not only Oracle and
IBM in DB systems, but MS and others are starting to use RDF DBs because they
need the flexibility and the linking) so I've given up on arguing in closed
circles - I still write articles and give plenty of talks
the key is, like the web, learning to live with inconsistency and ambiguity,
rather than claiming you can't do integration in its presence.
<<snip>> (014)
-JH
------------------------------- (015)
At 12:08 AM 1/31/07, Jim Hendler wrote [to SICoP]: (016)
The goal of that paper is to claim (and later papers have more details) that
the current technology is exactly aimed at achieving interoperability at the
semantic level at a Web Scale, which certainly subsumes large enterprises
with many domains. I've published several
papers on this ranging from vision papers like the Scientific American article
and the agents on the semantic web (google scholar for Semantic Web finds
these) and more technical ones - our technical papers are at
http://www.mindswap.org/papers. (017)
There's obviously no way to prove that ?X can be done with current technology,
what I'm arguing against is your equally unprovable contention that it can't.
What I do believe is your arguments ignore significant aspects of current
technology (esp. the Semantic Web work) that take it much further towards what
you are claiming it cannot achieve than you seem to think. I don't have time
to recap all the arguments here, but I think the bottom line is that I buy your
argument if you were saying current technology defined as DL reasoners
manipulating OWL assertions, but that's not what the Semantic Web is all about,
and the URI-based reference mechanism coupled with the standard for KR and
other aspects is aimed exactly at scalability. (018)
I don't have time for a long email discussion on this right now, I simpl wanted
to remind the forum that there is argument with your contention, and that not
everyone agrees (both of which are self evident arguments).
I leave it to the readers of your paper to think about these issues - that's
all.
-Jim H. (019)
Data Interoperability Across the Enterprise 29-Jan-07.doc
Description: MS-Word document
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