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Re: [ontac-forum] Re: Future directions for ontologies and terminologies

To: ONTAC-WG General Discussion <ontac-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Arun Majumdar <arun@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 01:04:54 -0500
Message-id: <43B61F86.2050500@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Dear Cory,    (01)

I reviewed your paper and liked it.  Do you have a process flowchart or 
diagram that summarizes the ideas as a picture might help us modularize 
and iterate the sub-processes required?   However, I like the overall 
gist and this might be usable in developing a "methodology", even 
without any diagrams.    (02)

Thanks,    (03)

Arun    (04)

Cory Casanave wrote:    (05)

>Re: How will ontologies help with legacy systems maintenance?
>Legacy evolution and integration is what I was addressing here...
>http://www.semanticcore.org/requirements/InterfaceAdaptation.pdf
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: ontac-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>[mailto:ontac-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Eddy
>Sent: Friday, December 30, 2005 11:36 PM
>To: ontac-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [ontac-forum] Re: Future directions for ontologies and
>terminologies
>
>John Sowa -
>
>BEFORE reading the 5 additional waiting digests in my in-box, I'm going
>to come out of lurk mode & throw my two cents on the table--at the
>extremem opposite end of the table from John Sowa I think--as to what I
>think could be a valuable contribution from this group...
>
>
>  
>
>>CC> A valuable task for this group would be to collect and
>> > validate user driven requirements as well as the scenario
>> > of applying an upper ontology to those solutions.  This
>> > will help nail down the set of problems we are addressing
>>
>>    
>>
>
>Maybe the phrase "rip & replace is NOT an option..." is old news, but
>the first time I heard it at Mitre gig in McLean in September 2004
><http://www.topquadrant.com/conferences/sept8_2004/stgov04.htm> from
>Mike Daconta, it really grabbed my attention.
>
>For a variety of reasons I'll claim that I look at the world thru the
>very foggy & scratched glasses--very much the opposite of "rose
>colored"--of a maintenance programmer.  Pick your legacy language...
>COBOL, Fortran, PL/S, Algol, Java, Ruby, PHP,...
>
>I've had a wonderful time in my career BUILDING systems... guess what?
>The green fields are all built up now.  While it may be feasible to put
>$13 billion into the rats hole of Boston's "Big Dig" (thank you very
>much taxpayers of America), such massive reconstruction efforts are NOT
>likely to happen to the software infrastructure we've built over the
>past 50+ years.
>
>The challenge going forward is getting those crusty old legacy
>systems--that WORK--to talk with other systems.
>
>And that's where taxonomy, ontology & semantics comes in... not 1 in
>100,000 of the systems that our daily lives depend on has been either
>conceived, designed, built, and certainly not maintained with a
>nanosecond of thought towards the organizational principles in formal
>ontologies.
>
>Said another way... if you can distill ANY semantics from MSTR-MENSA-FL
>with RDF, predicate calculus, KIF, or any other formal logic process,
>I'm all ears.
>
>
>I recently discovered this interesting article by Dr George (Mr WordNet)
>Miller...
><http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0186.html>
>
>... take a simple 13 word sentence & it provides some 3.6 Trillion
>combinations.  As he points out... no wonder "machine translation" has
>had such a hard time living up to it's dreams.
>
>And as far as I can tell the WordNet effort primarily only deals in real
>words.
>
>News flash... inside software applications "real words" are few & far
>between.
>
>
>What I want out of this ontological discourse is something that helps
>systems analysts & programmers to more quickly UNDERSTAND what the
>systems under their care are actually talking about.
>
>
>Bluntly... I've heard this fundamental challenge/conundrum throw up in
>the SOA (service oriented architecture) commercial space... 
>
>The business problem: I'm in an insurance company that has several
>thousand applications (a universe of undefined extent comprised of
>custom built applications, heavily customized packages & box-stock
>packages...)
>
>
>
>[FYI... there was a recent blurb in WashingtonTechnology...
>
>"EA helps mind the money
>By Drew Robb
>11/07/05; Vol. 20, No. 22 Intelligence is an imperfect science. Just ask
>CIA or the 9/11 Commission. Or EDS Corp., the contractor tasked with
>wrangling thousands of legacy systems into the Navy-Marine Corps
>Intranet. When EDS started the job, the Navy thought it had about 5,000
>applications to integrate. EDS found more than 100,000."]
>
>
>
>If I'm in Silo A & know what "policy number" represents, how do I know
>that over in Silo B, I need to be looking for "contract ID"?
>
>[This is an extremely simplified example... this basic problem caught my
>attention 25 years ago at an insurance company that had discovered some
>70 names for the core "policy number" concept... I doubt if that number
>has gotten smaller in the past 25 years.]
>
>
>Sorry to be so long winded... but I vote with Denise Bedford...
>"metadata is NOT hierarchical."  And the corollary... software systems
>are NOT inherently organized.
>
>
>How will ontologies help with legacy systems maintenance?
>
>_____________________
>
>- David Eddy
>Babson Park, MA
>781-455-0949
> 
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>  
>    (06)


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