Hi Roy & All:
I'm no authority either, but it's worthwhile reiforcing Roy's general point
regarding the FEA as an outcome of our discussions. That being said and so
that I and others can learn from the authorities that contribute their
expertise here at ONTAC every day (John, Chris, Arun, Leo, Barry - many
thanks), here's the original message ...
Ok, Brand tapped me for a presentation on 2/10 at the 4th Semantic Web
Conference for EGov and I volunteered to present: "Information Flow in the
Federal Enterprise: Representing the FEA Reference Models with Languages and
Logics" I skipped the Theories and Models as the title was getting pretty long
...
I've been working through an example assuming the FEA reference models
would supply the types and tokens. By leveraging the language expressiveness
chart from "A Description Logic for Use as the ODM Core" to which I have
previously referred, I propose to show with the example and open the
discussion around where interpretations between technical components
represented as classifications and expressed in UML, Topic Maps, and OWL-DL
would either satify or fail to satisfy conditions of soundness and
completeness in their local logics.
I still have a week or so of formatting and such in LaTex to represent the
IF notation, but could I send a copy for comment prior to the presentation
?
Also, from below: What reasoner or rules engines are currently available to
execute common logic and its derivatives. We've been focusing on DL
using Pellet recently and would be interested in learning what alternatives
are available.
BTW - This message originally went to some weird cc list, so It's a
repost.
Best wishes,
Rick
office: 202-501-9199
cell:
202-557-1604
"Roy Roebuck"
<Roy.Roebuck@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: ontac-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
01/20/2006 11:10 AMPlease respond to"ONTAC-WG
General Discussion"
To "ONTAC-WG General
Discussion" <ontac-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
cc
bcc Richard C. Murphy/IAA/CO/GSA/GOV
Subject RE:
[ontac-dev] RE: [ontac-forum] RE: Shall we start? - sub (
10)
Hi:
I am not an authority for this group. But to
again inform and focus
those WG participants outside the Federal Enterprise
Architecture
community that recently gave rise to the ONTAC WG -
the Common
Semantic Model that the ONTAC WG's founding authority
[i.e., the SICoP
(U.S. Federal CIO Council's (CIOC) Architecture and
Infrastructure
Committee (AIC) Semantic Interoperability Community of
Practice)]
expects from the COSMO facet of the ONTAC WG effort is a
"semantic
model" that encompassses U.S. Federal enterprise management and
the
supporting enterprise architecture efforts and capability, as
now
bounded by the OMB FEA Assessment Framework, V2, released this
month.
If the ontology being discussed and "developed" by this WG does
not
support U.S. Federal Government organizations' efforts to attain Level
5
across the board in that assessment framework, then I submit that
it
does not need to be part of this discussion. A semantic mechanism
to
provide interoperability of FEA efforts, metaschema, methodology,
and
modeling and repository technology is needed - that's
all.
Enough philosophy! Let us
build something useful for the FEA community,
using semantic technologies,
quickly! Let us work with tools, not
debate the science and
philosphical underpinnings of the tools.
Roy
-----Original Message-----
From:
ontac-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontac-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Azamat
Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 9:56 AM
To: ONTAC-WG
General Discussion
Subject: Re: [ontac-dev] RE: [ontac-forum] RE: Shall we
start? - sub
(10)
Patrick,
We
all know that you are trying to do a good thing. But reading your
manifesto
is producing more questions than answers. Below just few
of
them
instigated by your folowing basic
statements.
[PC]
>There have
been several proposals in ONTACWG discussion for what might
>serve as a
the beginnings of a Common Semantic Model.
>
Please expound a Common Semantic Model of What?:
1.
of Reality, the World, its basic aspects, levels,
features,
components,
factors, or meanings;
2. of human knowledge,
its basic features, components, factors, and
meanings;
3. or of natural
language, its basic namespace composition, structure,
features, senses and
meanings.
>It is possible that
one of the existing upper ontologies could be
adopted
>as a whole.
Thus far there has not been general support for
that
strategy.
>Perhaps the complexity of those systems is not yet
balanced by
demonstrated
>publicly available and impressive
applications; the needed motivating
>factors may be
absent.
<
Another question
arising is how can you expect something (funding) from
the
taxonomies
telling reasoning applications nothing essential about the
real
world,
existence, being, and reality, its nonlinear
complexity,
composition,
dynamics, aspects, levels, systems, and,
especially, (causal )
relationships?
For missing the class of relationships as a basic
pillar of reality is
missing such significant phenomena as process,
causality, order,
difference,
organization, complexity, hierarchy,
structure, control, information,
communication, etc. Lack of relational
entity as a key denizen of the
world
is a main reason why neither of the
taxonomies imposed can't be used as
a
standard, nor they can be employed
as the complementary parts of a
whole.
As a test case, try and adapt any of the ontologies for
developing an
integrative (ontological) theory of complex nonlinear causal
systems. Or
try
just to imagine any of your proposed entity models for
creating the
class of
reasoning applications dealing with dynamic
complexity in nature, mind
or
society, not speaking of making the
modeling agents capable to predict
the
behavior of the world, its
complex nonlinear hierarchical networked
systems.
Ontology is not a
catalogue of categories but a scientific theory of
reality, its levels and
aspects, composition and properties, states and
changes as well as the
entity constraining fundamental relationships
(downward and upward
causality known as part-whole relationships,
space-time
relationships,
causal connections, etc.).
There is one rational way to relate the Real
World (W) and the Software
Computing World (C), via the Unified Framework
Ontology (UFO), as the
mapping scheme UFO: W arrow C. Since, instead of
descriptive ontological
models, we
must be after a standard theory of real entities and
relationships, their
properties and value types as the realistic,
prescriptive and predictive
ontology intended for scientific, cognitive
and
linguistic
engineering.
>WordNet has also
been suggested as a model, but is not itself used for
>logical
inference.
The WordNet is the most
rich and comprehensive lexical taxonomy. You
can't
do better common
semantic model of entity names than logically
encompassing
the whole
content of WordNet, as it has been done in USECS. Only then,
having
developed the (WordNet) intergrative ontological context, one
may
take on the difficult task of
automatic processing (building, alligning,
mapping, merging, intergrating, querying, and what not)
of domain
content
(or Web data) with specific reasoning mechanisms
and inference rules,
thus
making all sorts of specific ontological and
semantic applications.
Regards,
Azamat Abdoullaev
http://www.eis.com.cy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Cassidy, Patrick
J." <pcassidy@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "ONTAC Forum"
<ontac-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 9:21
AM
Subject: FW: [ontac-dev] RE: [ontac-forum] RE: Shall we start? -
sub
(10)
There is a
question from Ken Ewell which I think touches on a topic of
broad
interest:
>[PC] It will be
easier to get agreement, the simpler the core is, but
>in order to serve
the proposed function of enabling interoperability
by
>providing a
set of concepts with which definitions of complex concepts
>can be
specified, it will have to have a certain irreducible level
of
>complexity. Just how complex it can get and still gather a
wide range
>of acceptance among user communities is not obvious to me.
But over
>the years I have heard many - actually most -
ontologists say that
they
>would use another representation if there
was a good reason to do so.
>
>
[KE] Would those same
ontologist choose to interact using a different
language?
The one that
affirms would make for a very interesting, and most
likely,
enlightening
case.
[PC] Actually, yes, if there
were any benefit to do so. We have ample
precedent of people taking
great trouble to learn a natural language
which is not their native tongue
in order to communicate with others.
Every international scientific
conference I have attended was conducted
in English, and included speakers
who obviously were not comfortable
with our language, but took the trouble
to learn it because it was the
medium required to communicate with those
they wanted to communicate
with. People take a lot of trouble to
learn complex programming
languages, because there are examples of programs
using those languages
that do very useful things. Conversely, if one
already knows a
programming language, it takes a lot more motivation, such
as examples
of things a new language can do that the old language can't,
that will
induce people to learn a second language. As far as
ontologists go, I
will use **any** language that has a large user base and
a reasonable
number of public sample applications. I have spoken with
others having
a similar attitude.
The whole game is motivation. Up to this point
there has been little
if any reason for people to painstakingly learn the
details of existing
upper ontology systems because (1) they are complex and
difficult to
learn; (2) they are not used enough for third-party developers
to
create utilities to make them easier to use and to extend their
use;
(3) there are few if any publicly available demonstration programs
that
make it clear that the ontologies will do enough useful things
to
justify the investment of time in learning them; and (4) since
there
are few reasoning systems available that already use that
ontology,
there is mostly no communications benefit right now in taking the
time
to tune one's own system to use it.
Those who have relatively simple reasoning or
representation tasks to
perform may take one look at something as complex
as Cyc and conclude -
perhaps justifiably for the immediate future - that
the costs of
learning to use it greatly outweigh the benefits. So
they make their
own, simpler knowledge classification system. What is
lost is the
potential for interoperability with other systems. But at
present it
is only a potential. The upper ontologies and the Common
Semantic
Model, useful in themselves, are only essential when one wants
one's
reasoning system to interoperate semantically with another's (or
one
organization's different databases to interact with each other).
So a
COSMO is **essential** only if you have a sophisticated
reasoning
system and want to interact with others. Getting to the
point where
there are enough local practical reasoning systems to begin to
gain the
enormous benefits of the networking effect via a COSMO is a
slow
process. When there are few local reasoning systems that need
to
communicate, the motivation to invest heavily in communication
is
absent. That is the current situation.
Nevertheless, it should be quite clear to anyone who
has taken any time
to examine the simpler examples of reasoning with
ontologies that the
technology will inevitably be extended to provide
powerful reasoning
systems with broad and very important capabilities.
As with a
programming language, there is a big difference between
developing a
small test program and a large and complex operating system.
Years of
intensive development involving many people may be
required.
Developing an impressive reasoning system will be, I suspect,
more
complex than developing an operating system like Windows. But
many of
the components are available. Predicting the timetable is
risky
because it depends a lot on a number of factors.
Will people take the time to learn and use a complex
upper ontology?
Someone else's ontology? Someone else's ontology
language? Yes, for
the same reasons that they take the time to learn
English and Java.
When examples are available to demonstrate the benefits
of using a new
language, they will undertake the
effort.
But developing a widely
used Common Semantic Model is not quite like
anything else that has been
done before, and analogies can hide
significant differences.
Developing applications of ontologies is a
more complicated task than
developing some simple program in a
programming language, and no community
speaks ontology as a native
language. To develop the "installed user
base" that will encourage
increasing numbers of people to use, test, and
improve a common
ontology may have to proceed in incremental steps of
increasing
complexity. Fortunately, we don't have to get universal
agreement,
just a large enough base of users to form a self-sustaining
community
that can share results with a common conceptual language and help
it
evolve and improve. The process could be greatly accelerated if
there
were a significant source of funding that could support a
large
representative group of users and developers oriented to a
single
ontology, to get a variety of impressive applications and utilities
to
make the system easy to use. But such funding has not
yet
materialized. It is possible that some influential organization
like
Microsoft will decide to create their own version for their
own
purposes and by monopoly power force the rest of us to use
it.
Windology anyone?
There is
another benefit of a Common Semantic Model beyond immediate
use in
applications, and that is to serve as a common paradigm of
meaning that can
help accelerate development of more powerful reasoning
systems.
Reasoning with contexts will be necessary to control the
explosion of
inference that will occur with first-order logic on even
moderately complex
knowledge bases. To meaningfully compare
alternative reasoning
methods, and learn what tactics work, it will be
essential to make
comparisons using the same realistically large
knowledge base, so that the
knowledge variables will be controlled and
the reasoning itself form the
subject of experiment. The COSMO can
perform that function, for any
community wishing to perform a
comparative evaluation of reasoning methods
and to reuse each other's
results.
One thing ONTACWG can do to help is to become a
community with a Common
Semantic Model and develop it in incremental steps.
At each stage the
investment of time in learning how to use it might
be commensurate with
the demonstrated or immediately realizable benefits of
the model at
that stage of development. In this way, those who are
not convinced
enough of the benefits of complex ontology systems may have
less
complex systems available that are easier to learn and evaluate.
This
is a model for development that is propelled by a combination of
the
complexity of the topic and the absence of direct funding for a
broad
community effort. Whether it can succeed will depend on whether
our
volunteer participants will focus on the concrete details
of
construction and evaluation of the Common Semantic Model in
its
increasingly complex and increasingly capable
stages.
There have been several
proposals in ONTACWG discussion for what might
serve as a the beginnings of
a Common Semantic Model. It is possible
that one of the existing
upper ontologies could be adopted as a whole.
Thus far there has not been
general support for that strategy. Perhaps
the complexity of those
systems is not yet balanced by demonstrated
publicly available and
impressive applications; the needed motivating
factors may be absent.
WordNet has also been suggested as a model, but
is not itself used
for logical inference.
All
suggested approaches are welcome. Providing specific
computational
resources to support an approach will probably increase the
chances
that other members will take an interest. There are some
commercial
programs that can be useful, and references to those can be
helpful,
but if they are expensive it will probably be necessary to
provide
powerful motivation by specific examples of utility in order to
induce
others to part with their cash.
Right now the only specific small starter version of a
COSMO that has
been proposed for ONTACWG is the merged top levels from
OpenCyc, SUMO,
and DOLCE (with a few elements from BFO and ISO15926), which
I put on
our site at:
http://colab.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?CosmoWG/TopLevel2
.
. . and is available in OWL form at:
http://colab.cim3.net/file/work/SICoP/ontac/reference/ProtegeOntologies
/COSMOtopOWL03.owl
Discussions about this and related topics are
proceeding now within the
ONTAC-dev email reflector. to subscribe go
to:
Pat
Patrick Cassidy
MITRE Corporation
260 Industrial
Way
Eatontown, NJ 07724
Mail Stop:
MNJE
Phone: 732-578-6340
Cell:
908-565-4053
Fax: 732-578-6012
Email:
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