RE: SUO: 21 May 2002 -- Unanswered Questions About SUMO Set Theory
Can I support the point underlying Bill's comment that:
>> It seems to be recognized by many people who have chosen to join this
group
>> that SUMO, OpenCyc or any similar effort will not achieve (3).
3) The SUO will play the role of a neutral interchange format whereby
owners of existing applications will be able to map existing data
elements just once to a common ontology. This provides a degree of
interoperability with other applications whose representations
conform to SUO. This entails the SUO being able to be mapped to
more restricted forms such as XML, database schema, or object
oriented schema.
As he says "If you want anecdotal evidence then there is anecdotal evidence
that Cyc has not been successful at this task. If it were, the whole IT
industry would be lining up to buy Cyc software and consulting. This would
be an unfair point if Cyc hadn't been around for so long. Based on the fact
that SUMO is essentially a Cyc-like architecture, I don't expect any better
outcome for it." Though I suspect the truth is a little more complicated -
the basic point seems to me correct, and important to recognise.
Application integration is currently a big headache for enterprises - with
millions if not billions spent on it. Enterprises are eager for a solution,
so if Cyc-type efforts were the solution then there should be some
significant evidence that they are working - not just anecdotes. Presumably
if SUMO is the answer, then corporations would already be using it to solve
their problems, and asking for more. Note this is not to denigrate the work
that has gone into SUMO, just the naive assumption that it will resolve the
kind of problems noted in 3) above.
It seems to me that Bill's point that a different strategy is needed if 3)
is going to be cracked is unanswerable. However, I do not expect much
consensus about what that different strategy should be. And the person who
works it out will probably not need to bother with IEEE standards.
Chris Partridge
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org
[mailto:owner-standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org]On Behalf Of Bill
Andersen
Sent: 21 May 2002 21:49
To: SUO
Subject: Re: SUO: 21 May 2002 -- Unanswered Questions About SUMO Set Theory
On 5/21/02 14:17, "Adam Pease" <apease@ks.teknowledge.com> wrote:
>> It seems to be recognized by many people who have chosen to join this
group
>> that SUMO, OpenCyc or any similar effort will not achieve (3).
>
> That's an odd "recognition" since it flies in the face of at least
> anecdotal evidence to the contrary. We've used both Cyc and SUMO to
> integrate existing applications. The Cyc integration tasks are described
in
>
> Cohen, P., Schrag, R., Jones, E., Pease, A., Lin, A., Starr, B., Gunning,
> D., and Burke, M. (1998), The DARPA High Performance Knowledge Bases
> Project, AI Magazine, Vol. 19 No.4, Winter.
>
> <http://projects.teknowledge.com/HPKB/Publications/AImag.pdf>
>
> One might claim there's a better, or more efficient way to accomplish
this,
> but not that SUMO or Cyc can't successfully be used for this task.
If you want anecdotal evidence then there is anecdotal evidence that Cyc has
not been successful at this task. If it were, the whole IT industry would
be lining up to buy Cyc software and consulting. This would be an unfair
point if Cyc hadn't been around for so long. Based on the fact that SUMO is
essentially a Cyc-like architecture, I don't expect any better outcome for
it.
> I think you may misunderstand the IEEE then. IEEE charters groups to
> achieve their PARs. This is not just a discussion group. If someone has
a
> project they believe in and want to make it into a standards effort, they
> should do so, possibly by chartering a new IEEE group with a new PAR. For
> example, Jim Schoening was already involved in P1484, but didn't try to
> push an ontology standard in that group since that wasn't the charter of
> the group. Instead, he started a new group. Mike Gruninger didn't try to
> standardize KIF in this group, he's submitted a new work item for ANSI.
> This isn't about my approach or anyone else's. It's simply about
following
> a normal standards process.
Correct - as far as it goes. However, I don't think there's anything in the
IEEE rules that allows *you* to arbitrate what is and is not in conformance
with the PAR. I, for one, do not believe that criticism, concisely,
politely, and fairly expressed, that a given proposed effort will not
achieve the goals of the PAR, ought to be beyond the purview of this group.
.bill