SUO: RE: Ontological Tagging
Dear Colleagues,
I would like to pick out one thing here in particular.
> Physical tags come in different shapes and colours, so an
> ontological tag has
> two major attributes, the namespace representing the shape
> and colour and the
> reference representing the written data on the physical tag.
We have implemented namespaces in a way that is something like this in
EXIST. I note that there seems to be no such facility in KIF (please correct
me if I am wrong).
The practical value of namespaces is that they allow terms to have more than
one meaning (it was already possible for different terms to have the same
meaning using equality). Since terms usually do have more than one meaning,
there is an immediate application in linguistics. However, it is also
valuable when merging or mapping existing ontologies. You cannot require
that the two ontologies shall not have used the same name for anything
before you start. Namespaces provide a convenient way of differentiating the
different uses.
Regards
Matthew
============================================
Matthew West
Asset Information Management
Shell Services International
H3229, Shell Centre, London, SE1 7NA, UK.
Tel: +44 207 934 4490 Fax: 7929
E-mail: Matthew.R.West@is.shell.com
http://www.shellservices.com/
============================================
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Mohring [mailto:heretic@ihug.co.nz]
> Sent: 10 August 2000 18:41
> To: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> Subject: Ontological Tagging
>
>
>
> Heresy part 1 : Ontological Tagging
>
> One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to
> understand about human beings was their habit of continually
> stating and repeating the obvious, as in It's a nice day, or
> You're very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a
> thirty-foot well, are you alright? At first Ford had formed a
> theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings
> don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths
> probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and
> observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If
> they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their
> brains start working. After a while he abandoned this one as well
> as being obstructively cynical and decided he quite liked human
> beings after all, but he always remained desperately worried
> about the terrible number of things they didn't know about.
>
> Quote from The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
>
> With this in mind here are some blatantly obvious observations.
>
> (And maybe in a later post some solutions to large scale multi-form
> knowledge representation.)
>
> The Ontological Tag
> - Or I've just come from Denver, where is my luggage?
>
> To applications symbols and words in an ontology are just
> tags which perform
> the same function as a physical tag does on a suitcase at an airport.
>
> Just as a piece of luggage may have many physical tags
> attached upon it's
> handle so may a piece of data have many ontological tags
> referenced to it.
>
> Physical tags come in different shapes and colours, so an
> ontological tag has
> two major attributes, the namespace representing the shape
> and colour and the
> reference representing the written data on the physical tag.
>
> Just as a physical tag of one shape and colour may be of
> interest just to one
> process of transferring luggage from one destination to
> another, the namespace
> of a tag may be of interest to one set of applications.
>
> It greatly helps the sorting process if physical tags from
> any two vendors
> that are not meant to be used in the same process do not
> share the exact same
> shape and colour, so it also helps if the namespace of an
> ontological tag is
> also unique to each process.
>
> You can use a URI as an ontological tag using the standard format of
> "http://vendoraddress/namespace#reference". To an application
> what the URI
> references is unimportant, only that it has an unique address for each
> "destination"
>
> IMHO the role of SUO should stop at this point, generate
> basic tag ontologies
> without having to try and resolve this next issue.
>
> When missing the appropriate physical tag of the correct
> shape and colour it
> may be possible to "guess" the appropriate destination from
> another "known"
> type of tag. Unless following very consistent and unambiguous rules
> this will probably result in the bag going to incorrect destination.
> ( Well it always seems to happen to me - dammit )
>
> If the SUO attempt to provide an automated standard solution
> to the above
> problem, then its members will probably be at best morally
> (and at worst
> legally ) responsible for every "correct" implementation
> based on that
> standard.
>
> Imagine going down in history as the "Denver baggage handling system"
> designers of all the new ontological based applications.
>
> David Mohring - Continue [Y]es [N]o ?
>