My current role is in advising a
particular portion of the US government in where
to focus a few of its technological expenditures. In that capacity, I
have been getting to know a vast sea of data sets, tools, and legacy
systems. And I have formed the view that the most crying technological
needs happen to be ones with which we ontologists can help:
My customer needs to tie together
large numbers of structured data sets into one seamless analytical
environment.
They need to share that seamless
picture with other groups.
They need a robust object model to
support such a seamless environment.
To that end, I’m not looking for,
Horn clauses or free form axioms. I’m looking for what I call structural
axioms. Structural axioms specify the object-oriented subset of a
logical theory – namely entities, type inheritance, other relations, relation
argument typing (argxIsa), etc.
They need an upper ontology from
which to derive our object model. To me, an upper ontology means chiefly
the structural axioms starting with “Thing” and descending the inheritance
lattice a relatively small number of levels. The focus of that ontology
is the actual domain entities such as people, events, places, but includes
other entities and relations needed to properly specify and utilize the these
domain definitions.
Please give us the simple
structural definitions with which we can model our domains. Horn clauses
are wonderful, but they haven’t yet made much of an impact on the market place
since I first encountered them as an undergraduate a couple of decades
ago. And if the marketplace isn’t ready for Horn clauses, it certainly
isn’t ready for more sophisticated free-form axioms.
In the commercial world, I’ve
found the need to be the same. When Deborah McGuiness helped VerticalNet
to set up their ontology group, she advised the same structural subset of
logic. Pat Cassidy and I worked in that ontology group (for
Leo Obrst) where we
oversaw and helped with the knitting together of multiple product catalogues
into one seamless product picture.
So I’m suggesting that if we are
not focusing on structural axioms we are not giving the marketplace what it
really needs or will soon fund seriously.
Eric Peterson
Chief
Technologist
Harris Corp.