Dear David,

You were absolutely correct when you wrote:

How ontologies could add value, I don't have a clue, since as far as I know it's a hard & fast ontological rule that requires a term to have a single definition/meaning... an extremely unrealistic constraint for this sort of ugly real world challenge. [If I've got this wrong, please set me straight.]

I agree. And as I said in an earlier post on this topic:

But the search for an abstract, anthromathomorphic ontology is, IMHO, a lost cause from the beginning. All financial justification is from the application up, not from the philosophy down.

That is why Dublin Core succeeded. It is small, very simple, well documented, and matched by large hunks of examples that describe document provenance within its limits. In that sense, Dublin Core is a new legacy just as the software which interfaces with it might be a legacy database.

My point is that small kernels of English knowledge (a la Dublin Core) are similar in scope and complexity to the successful software components which were so helpfully used as components within those legacy systems when we built them in the first place.

Remember Delphi’s component palette? Neat, documented little OOD chunks of code that could be learned in an hour, used in many ways throughout a program (think TForm, TList, TDatabase, …) so that we could leverage our development time to produce more functionality in the same schedule.

If the specific words, names, lexicon for those small hunks of code can be learned (which they often could), then the problem of a bottom up set of symbols was much easier to handle than the top down insistence on singular terms that so far haven’t even been well understood, well documented, or well thought through yet.

But that is about as far as I see ontology going in the next dozen years.

JMHO,

-Rich

Sincerely,

Rich Cooper

EnglishLogicKernel.com

Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com

9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2

-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Eddy
Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2012 6:41 PM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] What goes into a Lexicon?

Rich -

On Feb 25, 2012, at 6:27 PM, Rich Cooper wrote:

> Ontology

> designers that produce a well documented, highly

> learnable and usable ontology (i.e., something

> simple and down in the details of a domain) could

> provide a satisfying brick to many of those first

> time developments.

I am speaking in the context of the legacy software systems that

enable our lives.

The language/lexicon/terminology/slang/whatever already exists in the

applications. Unfortunately it's pretty much been put together with

a single ended one-time pad... & that guy(s) has left the building.

The problem is, unless you have the SME sitting at your side, or lots

& lots of time, the terminology is very difficult to grok. And when

you move to the next assignment, the terminology/lexicon is very

likely to be different, so you have to forget what you just spent 6

months learning.

I would likely argue that this language collection has not been

accumulated with the idea of an organized ontology in mind.

Imposing an organized ontology on this disorganized language

collection probably isn't going be of much help.

But something that quickly shows or records or suggests that in a

particular context "no" actually means "id" (e.g. soc_sec_no....

social security "number" is not a number, it's an index... a very

different beast)... now that would be useful & likely to be embraced

by the grunts—application owners, analysts, programmers—in the trenches.

How ontologies could add value, I don't have a clue, since as far as

I know it's a hard & fast ontological rule that requires a term to

have a single definition/meaning... an extremely unrealistic

constraint for this sort of ugly real world challenge. [If I've got

this wrong, please set me straight.]

___________________

David Eddy

deddy@davideddy.com

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