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RE: [ontac-forum] Re: Future directions for ontologiesand terminologies

To: "'ONTAC-WG General Discussion'" <ontac-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <SemanticCore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <OS-ERA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc:
From: "Cory Casanave" <cbc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 17:25:26 -0500
Message-id: <002d01c60feb$6ebc6750$0500a8c0@cbcpc>

Arun,

I updated the document with a use case (also enclosed), see if that makes it any more clear.

-Cory

Figure 1

 

-----Original Message-----
From: ontac-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontac-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Arun Majumdar
Sent: Saturday, December 31, 2005 1:05 AM
To: ONTAC-WG General Discussion
Subject: Re: [ontac-forum] Re: Future directions for ontologiesand terminologies

 

Dear Cory,

 

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.

 

Thanks,

 

Arun

 

Cory Casanave wrote:

 

>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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