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Re: [cuo-wg] Technical maturity of Semantic Web solution

To: "common upper ontology working group" <cuo-wg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "Adrian Walker" <adriandwalker@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2007 11:33:37 -0500
Message-id: <1e89d6a40702060833w760cb19ct49d823440bc0969f@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Jim --    (01)

I'd vote for URI/OWL/Ontologies at about 6, and Executable English [1]
also at about 6, for the kinds of purposes in your use case.    (02)

Of course, given the 10/90 rule, that means that there's a lot of work ahead.    (03)

You may like to try to get John Linebarger at Sandia involved in
rating the maturity of URI/OWL/Ontologies, as I believe he has fielded
some work on query expansion using this approach.    (04)

HTH,  -- Adrian    (05)

Internet Business Logic (R)
A Wiki for Executable Open Vocabulary English
Online at www.reengineeringllc.com
                                Shared use is free
Adrian Walker
Reengineering    (06)

On 2/6/07, Schoening, James R C-E LCMC CIO/G6
<James.Schoening@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Pat (or anyone),
>
>      OK, if what you describe is a potential solution, at what level of 
>technical maturity (using scale below, from the paper) would you rate this, 
>and please consider scalability as part of this assessement?
>
> 1.  Basic principles observed and reported.
> 2.  Technology concept and/or application formulated.
> 3.  Analytical and experimental critical functions and/or characteristic 
>proof of concept.
> 4.  Component and/or breadboard validation in laboratory environment.
> 5.  Component and/or breadboard validation in relevant environment.
> 6.  System/subsystem model or prototype demonstration in a relevant 
>environment.
> 7.  System prototype demonstration in an operational environment.
> 8.  Actual system completed and 'flight qualified' through test and 
>demonstration.
> 9.  Actual system 'flight proven' though successful mission operations.
>
> Jim Schoening
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pat Hayes [mailto:phayes@xxxxxxx]
> Sent: Monday, February 05, 2007 5:52 PM
> To: Schoening, James R C-E LCMC CIO/G6
> Cc: cuo-wg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [cuo-wg] The next key question
>
> >CDSI WG,
> >
> >       Given Pat Hayes' description (below) of what Jim Hendler refers to as
> >"URI-based reference mechanism coupled with the standard for KR and other 
>aspects is
> >aimed exactly at scalability.":
> >
> >         The key question now is: Could the above referenced technology
> >(when it matures) be used to achieve semantic interoperability across
> >large numbers of domains (with independently developed ontologies)?
> >Any takers?
>
> Sure. The direct answer to your question is, no.
> BUt that is because your question as posed misses the point: the open 
>publication paradigm allows ontologies to NOT be developed independently of 
>one another. They will cross-refer, use parts of other ontologies, and include 
>references - eventually, one hopes, 'nuanced' references - to one another in a 
>global network of semantic hyperlinks. And they will do this because to create 
>a useful ontology by re-using and linking in this way will be vastly easier 
>than building entire ontologies from scratch, in isolation from other ontology 
>building. Think of the SWeb as a growing ontology 'library', freelyopen to all 
>for modification and re-use. As pieces of this are written and found widely 
>useful, the number of links to them (and the economic pressure on the 
>community to find ways to preserve them) will grow, ensuring their even wider 
>re-use. This effect snowballs on the Web, as we all know. As far as I can see, 
>the pressures which make such phenomena as YouTube go from nothing to billions 
>of users in less than a year will still operate, albeit perhaps at a different 
>timescale, for the semantic web also. The semantic web is not just traditional 
>ontology engineering with XML added as a kind of afterthought. It is part of 
>the Web, and will be governed by Webbish laws of growth and distribution.
>
> Pat
>
> >
> >Jim Schoening
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >Pat Hayes wrote:
> >>
> >>  OK, here's my take on that.
> >>
> >>  First, "standard for KR". I think all that Jim means is, the SWeb is
> >> intended to use whatever is the best available KR mechanism that can
> >> be adopted as a 'standard', ie which a wide enough spectrum of users
> >> can be persuaded to agree to use. No such choice will be free from
> >> controversy. OWL wasn't and isn't free from controversy, and nobody
> >> even knows if a large enough community can ever be brought to
> >> consensus on an acceptable Rule language. But assuming that some WG
> >> can get its job completed, and produces a useful notation, then that
> >> can be used on the SWeb. There are plenty of potential candidates
> >> which are way more expressive than OWL readily available. So it would
> >> be a mistake to identify the SWeb vision with OWL or DL technology in
> >> particular. OWL-DL is just the first in what one hopes will be an
> >> evolving series of KR standards which will provide the infrastructure
> >> of the SWeb. Perhaps the next one will be more like  Python+Prolog on
> >> steroids. Or it may be a  breakthrough in CL reasoners using the
> >> guarded fragment, who knows?
> >>  The decision is as much political as technical, or even subject to
> >> whims of intellectual fashion.
> >>
> >>  "URI-based reference mechanism" is more interesting. This is one of
> >> the few things that really is new and different about the SWeb: it is
> >> part of the Web, and subject to Web conventions and protocols. It
> >> isn't *just* applied ontology engineering. So, every SWeb ontology is
> >> required to use names drawn from a (literally) global set of names.
> >>  The scope of these names is the entire Web. There are no 'locally
> >> scoped' or 'private'
> >>  names on the Sweb. So if your ontology uses a name for a concept, my
> >> ontology can use it too.
> >>  Anyone can 'say' anything about everyone else's concepts, on the Sweb.
> >>  This is a whole new game, which nobody has played before. A can
> >> introduce a concept called A:thingie1 and B can introduce B:thingie2,
> >> and C can then, entirely independently and without asking for A or
> >> B's  permission, assert that (say) A:thingie1 is the same as
> >> B:thingie2. A
> >  > and B may disagree: tough tittie, they can't stop C from making the
> >>  assertion. C can say things about A's ontology, in fact, such as
> >> assert that it is all BS. The globality of the namespace has a whole
> >> range of consequences which we are only beginning to explore. And
> >> being URIs (actually IRIs these
> >>  days) , these names can also be used as identifiers which *access*
> >> things on the Web.
> >>  Whether these accessed things should be the referents of the names
> >> is  currently controversial (I think not, in general), but that they
> >> access
> >>  *something* is not even remotely at issue. So SWeb concept names
> >> have  a whole new dimensionality to them, which is (or at any rate
> >> can be)  orthogonal to their use as referring names. In particular,
> >> it allows  ontologies to "address" other ontologies (a pale version
> >> of which is  the OWL:imports primitive, but one can do a lot more
> >> than this), which  obviously has many potential applications relevant to 
>scaling.
> >>
> >>  Hope this helps.
> >>
> >>  BTW, I entirely agree with Jim's optimism. I think people are way
> >> too  scared of inconsistencies. Lets wait and see what problems
> >> actually  crop up before trying to solve or avoid ones that we only
> >> worry about  rather than actually find.
> >>
> >>  Pat
> >>
> >
> >___
>
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>    (07)

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