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Re: [cuo-wg] A Concrete Example of Ontological Interoperability

To: "Adrian Walker" <adriandwalker@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: common upper ontology working group <cuo-wg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Pat Hayes <phayes@xxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2007 14:34:20 -0600
Message-id: <p06230910c1efe3d970d6@[10.100.0.26]>
>Hi Jim & All --
>
>The discussion so far is most interesting, at a general level. 
>
>In such a general discussion, it's sometimes 
>useful to anchor things with specific examples.
>
>Here is one such:
>
>|  Yongchun Gao wrote:
>|  Suppose someone developed an ontology by OWL, in which 'humans' is a
>|  class and has 'hasGender' as a property ( value=male/female ) . A man
>|  could be an instance of 'humans' which 'hasGender' of 'male'. It can
>|  work well.
>|  Suppose another expert developed an ontology by OWL too, in which
>|  'humans' and 'animals' are classes, but 'females' and 'males' are
>|  classes too ( can be attached to both 'animals' and 'humans' ) , and
>|  'men' is just two subclass of both 'humans' and 'males'. It may work
>|  too.
>|  But the problem here is HOW to unite these two different OWL files
>|  which tell the same ontology?
>
>There's an Executable English solution in
>
> 
><http://www.reengineeringllc.com/demo_agents/MergeOntologies1.agent>www.reengineeringllc.com/demo_agents/MergeOntologies1.agent
>
>Would the OWL folks like to show such an executable solution in OWL?    (01)

Well, maybe Im missing something, but it seems 
trivial, in the sense that the problem as posed 
contains its own solution. Call them respectively 
A and B. Then we have these classes:    (02)

A:humans
A:men
A:women
B:humans
B:animals
B:females
B:males    (03)

and the property    (04)

A:hasGender    (05)

and presumably the individuals    (06)

A:male
A:female    (07)

and the definitions (from A):    (08)

sameClass A:men {restrictValue A:hasGender A:male}
sameClass A:women {restrictValue A:hasGender A:female}    (09)

How to use these together? Well, just put them 
together (import them both, if you like) and add    (010)

sameClass A:humans B:humans
sameClass A:men {intersect B:males A:humans}
sameClass A:women {intersect B:females A:humans}    (011)

You actually have an option at this point. Do you 
want A:hasGender to apply to all animals or only 
to humans? If the former, add    (012)

domain A:hasGender B:animal    (013)

if the latter,    (014)

domain A:hasGender A:humans    (015)

There are several other additions and tidyings-up 
you can do, but this is the general idea.    (016)

>  If so, it would be good please to see a 
>scenario of how the OWL solution could  have 
>happened through social interaction and economic 
>pressure.    (017)

It is so trivial that a useful ontology would 
likely use both of them. Suppose two groups form, 
one applying gender to animals and the other only 
to humans. Suppose an on-line petshop decides to 
use the second, more restrictive, version. A 
shopping agent using the first is going to cause 
confusion at the petshop when it places an order; 
things will break, error messages will be 
produced, orders will be lost and customer 
relations will be soured. How long will it take a 
savvy pet-shop semantic web designer to decide to 
switch to the more useful ontology? What possible 
reason, other than incompetence or laziness, 
could there be for insisting on using an ontology 
inconsistent with those used by most of its 
customers?    (018)

Imagine a consortium of petshop owners which 
publishes a thoroughly worked-out ontology and 
advertises in the technical press that designers 
of shopping agents should use it, to speed the 
ordering process, perhaps offering them a small 
discount if they do so. What possible reason 
would they have for not doing? It would just be 
like linking to a web site.    (019)

>We should bear in mind too that the above 
>example is orders of magnitude smaller and 
>conceptually simpler than what would be need for 
>Jim's enterprise-wide interoperability 
>requirement.    (020)

Yes, it is very trivial example, but it illustrates the point quite well.    (021)

Pat    (022)

>
>Does anyone have concrete examples closer to 
>Jim's requirement?  (With any confidential 
>information obfuscated, of course.)
>
>Hope this helps,    -- Adrian
>
>
>Internet Business Logic (R)
>A Wiki for Executable Open Vocabulary English
>Online at <http://www.reengineeringllc.com>www.reengineeringllc.com
>                                 Shared use is free
>Adrian Walker
>Reengineering
>
>On 2/7/07, ajit kapoor 
><<mailto:ajitorsarah@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>ajitorsarah@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
>wrote:
>
>I would say it's not about the size of the organization but limited by
>domain knowledge. Cross domains will have difficulty but it is not due to
>technology limitation but the maturity of a interoperable infobase of
>ontology.
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Schoening, James R C-E LCMC CIO/G6" 
><<mailto:James.Schoening@xxxxxxxxxxx> 
>James.Schoening@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>To: "'common upper ontology working group'" 
><<mailto:cuo-wg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>cuo-wg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Wednesday, February 07, 2007 1:06 PM
>Subject: [cuo-wg] Technical maturity of Semantic Web approach to
>DataInteroperabil ity
>
>
>>  Pat and others,
>>
>>  Would you agree the Semantic Web approach to data interoperability shows
>>  great promise, but is not ready for large organizations to implement as a
>>  solution for data sharing across their many domains?
>>
>>  Jim Schoening
>>
>>
>>  -----Original Message-----
>>  From: Pat Hayes [mailto:<mailto:phayes@xxxxxxx>phayes@xxxxxxx ]
>>  Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 1:53 PM
>>  To: Schoening, James R C-E LCMC CIO/G6
>>  Subject: RE: [cuo-wg] Technical maturity of Semantic Web solution
>>
>>>  Pat,
>>>  I agree this is not the best model, but for our purposes, I suggest it
>>>is good enough.
>>>Perhaps you (or someone) could cite some recent demonstrations and
>>>whether they were in a laboratory, relevant, or operational
>>>environment.
>>>
>>>  I'd also be in favor of doing a version of this model for semantic
>>>interoperability.
>>>
>>>  I'm guessing the Semantic Web approach you describe works well in a
>>>small scale or a laboratory environment, but that there is no evidence
>>>(yet) it could scale up.
>>
>>  I don't think its ever been tried in a
>>  small-scale setting. All the Sweb ontologies are on the actual Web, for
>>  which there is no laboratory as such. Of course, there are many that
>>  nobody else uses, or were built as toy demonstrations, etc..
>>
>>  The best application/POC demo Ive seen of the approach is the FOAF
>>  project.
>>
>>  Pat
>>
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