Seeing the topic was bought up (changed title top reflect this), my special
interest is using ontologies to re-engineer legacy systems - and I would
agree with both Cory and David about this being an issue, and one that
ontologies can be very usefully applied. (01)
I published a book on this subject in 1996 on a methodology based upon my
experiences (02)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/075062082X/qid=1136021440/sr=1-4/re
f=sr_1_0_4/202-2807335-8670251
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0955060303/qid=1136021499/sr=1-5/re
f=sr_1_0_5/202-2807335-8670251 (03)
For those that do not want to bother Amazon, I think there is still an
electronic draft copy of the second edition somewhere, but do not have the
link with me at the moment. Mail me if you want it. (04)
If I read Dave and Cory right, what is puzzling is that the current ontology
applications seem to focus on a very small part of the current uses of
computing. Managing brownfield sites and the interoperability of these
systems is a major headache for most (if not all) major enterprises - and as
ontology can help (my experience) it seems odd that there is not more focus
on this. (05)
Regards,
Chris Partridge (06)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontac-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontac-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Cory Casanave
> Sent: 31 December 2005 05:46
> To: 'ONTAC-WG General Discussion'
> Subject: RE: [ontac-forum] Re: Future directions for ontologies
> andterminologies
>
> 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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