SUO: Re: SUOP Topic :> Definition Of Audience
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SUOPT :> Audience. Note 2
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In: SOUP Topics. http://suo.ieee.org/email/thrd2.html#11635
Re: SUOP 20. http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg11861.html
JA = Jon Awbrey
MW = Matthew West
Matthew,
Welcome back. I hope that you had an invigorating time away --
I'm guessing that you have a full slate of messages to clear,
and that you'll need all the vigour you can possibly muster --
so I will make this my last message for today.
I keep running the steam-roller over this passage,
bearing down on the bumps here and there that are
bound to impede the negotiation of its expression,
and to block articulation of the question in view.
Here is my latest edition:
| Ontologies Of Procedure.
|
| Yes, I really meant that. Indeed, I have only recently seen the light
| that a "Generic Ontology" (GO) -- such as the SUO Group is presently
| engaged in trying to specify and perhaps to realize in the SUO Work,
| and such as the same SUO Group finds itself forced rather literally
| to hammer out, albeit in a greatly reduced shape, almost as if in
| a "road test prototype", or a rougher, ruder, more rudimentary
| simulation of the full scale model, all just in order to bring
| a few bits of clarity and comprehension to the development of
| its Working Procedure Guidelines -- might actually be useful.
|
| Isn't that a curious development? Not to force the auto-simile too far
| down the road, to the point of some fractal recursion, perhaps, it does
| raise the question: If the SUO Group does not find a Generic Ontology,
| say, with regard to the Ontology Of Procedure, useful for the guidance
| of its own real activities in the real world, Then Who Will?
|
| That is the Question.
MW: Strictly, we are trying to produce a particular procedure rather
than an ontology of procedure. But it does not harm to look at
the meta level.
Yes, and I intend to maintain a focus on developing a workable procedure
spec until such time as we attain an increment of clear progress in that
direction. Still, as you observe, keeping one's eyes on the road, not
to mention the prize at the end of it, does nothing to obviate one's
need for peripheral vision.
MW: Since I am sure you would wish to look at what was considered current
"best undergraduate practice" I will mention the practical ontologies
of procedure that are in regular use that I have time for. These are:
- IDEF0
- Petri Nets
- Eiffel
When I was an undergraduate folks were very fond of PERT charts,
and Google tells me that the methodology is still not unherd of,
but all of these project planning techniques evolved in parallel
from a small core of ideas that once made up the subject matter
of Operations Research. So the ascent from linear programming
to dynamic programming to primitive recursive programming to
computable programming in general is an ancient line indeed.
People who bother with History at all will know the name of
the language that Wirth turned his attention to post-Pascal,
and the topics associated with structured programming, like
abstraction, encapsulization, and modularization, have been
standard dabs on the comp sci palette for as long as most
can remember. The scopes and limits of these techniques
will no doubt come up again. But we are still at the
stage of some very rough sketching, too rough for
much finer method yet.
Toward a more refined topology of topics -- topicology? --
I am tentatively distributing the above question to the
subtopic that is concerned with the Intended Audience,
and I hope that everyone recognizes how this supplies
a reflexive answer to Jim Schoening's question about
Missing Ingredients, since a poignant aspect of the
question is: Who or what user communities might
actually use our Ontology and our Procedures.
I am just asking: (1) "Why not us?" and (2)
"If not us, why would anybody else want to?"
The question may appear to multiply,
but it's still one heckuva question.
You realize, I'm sure, that I speak
of real audience, real users, not
nominal audience, nominal users.
Jon Awbrey
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