RE: SUO: Re: Conformance
Dear Pat,
See comments below.
Matthew West
Principal Consultant
Shell Information Technology International Limited
Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 20 7934 4490 Other Tel: +44 7796 336538
Email: matthew.r.west@is.shell.com
Internet: http://www.shell.com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pat Hayes [mailto:phayes@ai.uwf.edu]
> Sent: 16 October 2001 17:17
> To: West, Matthew R SITI-ITPSIE
> Cc: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> Subject: RE: SUO: Re: Conformance
>
>
> >
> >> Isn't part of the
> >> intended aim of the SUO to provide some kind of guarantee of
> >> interoperablity of more detailed ontologies, so that conformance
> >> ought to somehow ensure that 'lower' concepts are used in
> a mutually
> >> consistent way, even if they are not themselves taken
> directly from
> >> the SUO vocabulary?
> >
> >MW: Since system interoperability is a specific area I am working in,
> >I can tell you for a fact that an SUO, and even conformance to it
> >does almost nothing for interoperability of concepts defined under
> >it in different ontologies. Only integration of the ontologies will
> >achieve that.
>
> OK, but the idea is that conformance would at least provide a head
> start on the process of achieving integration, right?
MW: Not necessarily. For a start you are assuming that the ontology
will be capable of integrating the different views of the ontologies
to be integrated. Secondly, any ontology to be an integration ontology
has to include all the concepts that are to be integrated, not just
supertypes of them. We know this is inadequate in SC4 because we have
tried it. So an SUO might be a foundation (module) of an integration
ontology, but it is a long way from being sufficient.
If you want to know what is required for integration I really suggest
you take a look at ISO18876 - Integration of Industrial Data for
Exchange Access and Sharing Parts 1 & 2.
http://www.nist.gov/sc4/wg_qc/wg10/current/n337/wg10n337.htm Part 1
http://www.nist.gov/sc4/wg_qc/wg10/current/n338/wg10n338.htm Part 2
> I admit, I'm
> not being my usual cynical self. But we are talking *aspirations*
> here.
MW: Best wishes for a speedy recovery.
MW: But seriously, the best that you can hope for in an integration
environment is that the eventual SUO is a foundation of an integrating
ontology, and that use of terms from it (i.e. their meaning) is
consistent with the meaning defined in the standard (by the axioms)
MW: Anything more than this would require that we establish an
integration architecture and methodology (see above) so that the SUO
can be extended to meet the needs to integrate between ontologies.
>
> Pat
>
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