[ontac-forum] Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF) question

["Gary Berg-Cross" <gary.berg-cross@xxxxxxxx>]

 I attended the Expedition Workshop on Advancing Information Sharing And Data Architecture today (12/06).

 

I had a question which there wasn’t time to pose, on the Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF) briefing by Ron Schuldt and so I thought I might post it to Ron as well as here.

 

See http://colab.cim3.net/file/work/Expedition_Workshop/2005-12-06_Advancing_Information_Sharing_And_Data_Architecture/UDEF-DNS-6Dec2005.ppt

 

These have probably been discussed by discussed by the UDEF folks and might persue it on the ontac forum if others have a position on it.

 

Essentially the question concerns issues with the UDEF “Semantics” which seems to be based on a fixed set of  17 Class categories that are decomposable into sub-classes. Taxonomies provide weak semantics but beyond this there seems to be a real problem with this partially fixed class structure. UDEF assigns a 3 part number (object class #, object/term # and property of term #).  The first part of the number is based on the object classification and therefore part of it is fixed by the 17 top level classes that UDEF proposes (listed below) and whatever sub-classes people come up with.

 

UDEF Object

Class List

•         Entity

•         Document

•         Enterprise

•         Place

•         Program

•         Product

•         Process

•         Person

•         Asset

•         Law-Rule

•         Environment

•         Condition

•         Liability

•         Animal

•         Plant

•         Mineral

•         Event

 

 

So if either the top level classes or how you sub-class thing change the “semantics” change and therefore the number would have to change. How does UDEF propose to handle this?

 

Looking at the classes I could see major issues off the top.  For example, I wonder why Document or Plant is not an Entity or where medical diagnosis might be in this hierarchy? 

 

So taken as a whole I see an issue with the semantics of the approach.  If UDEF is to be effective it seems to me that its approach to semantics will have to be richer.  The triplet might be a nice way to label an ontology, but now it just does a taxonomic portion and might have to be redesigned to provide labels for ontology "nodes"....

 

Thoughts?

 

 

 

 Gary Berg-Cross

EM&I

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