Re: One more Upper Ontology
Leonid,
Thank you for bringing the Common Information Model (CIM)
to our attention. That is one more example of the way
that ontologies proliferate. And CIM has the backing
of much more powerful groups (i.e., with more money)
than any ontology that is being considered by the SUO.
Following is the list of board members (in alphabetical
order):
Cisco, Dell, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel,
Microsoft, NEC, Novell, Oracle, Sun Microsystems,
Symantec, VERITAS Software, WBEM Solutions.
Besides board members, they have a much longer list of
leadership members, participation members, monitoring
members, alliance partner members, and academic alliance
members.
There is no way that the SUO can compete with them in
terms of funding. However, it might be possible for the
SUO to influence them by becoming a partner with them.
Even though the SUO doesn't have any money, it is acredited
by the IEEE to develop standards. That accreditation alone
is very significant -- and it might be sufficient to get
some leverage with the CIM group and its board members.
Note that a CIM schema is NOT expressed in any version
of logic that we have been discussing, such as predicate
calculus, KIF, CGs, OWL, etc. Instead, it is expressed in
a Managed Object File (MOF) and displayed in UML diagrams.
But both MOF and UML are candidates for being translated
to and from the Common Logic framework, which is being
developed as the common semantic base for all of the above
versions of logic. The task of mapping MOF and UML to
Common Logic would enable any ontology developed by the
SUO to be converted to a CIM schema and vice-versa.
The task of specifying that mapping would require some
effort, which would require some people to do some work,
for which funding would certainly be desirable. Perhaps
an alliance with the CIM group could help with the funding
-- either by getting support for current SUO members or
by getting employees of the board members to join the SUO
and contribute to the joint effort.
Following are some excerpts from their FAQ file.
John Sowa
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Source: http://www.dmtf.org/about/faq/cim
WHAT IS CIM?
CIM stands for Common Information Model. It is a conceptual information
model for describing management that is not bound to a particular
implementation. This allows for the interchange of management
information between management systems and applications. This can be
either "agent to manager" or "manager to manager" communications that
provides for Distributed System Management. There are two parts to CIM:
The CIM Specification and the CIM Schema.
The CIM Specification describes the language, naming, Meta Schema and
mapping techniques to other management models such as SNMP MIBs, and
DMTF MIFs etc. The Meta Schema is a formal definition of the model. It
defines the terms used to express the model and their usage and
semantics. The elements of the Meta Schema are Classes, Properties, and
Methods. The Meta Schema also supports Indications and Associations as
types of Classes and References as types of Properties.
The CIM Schema provides the actual model descriptions. The CIM Schema
supplies a set of classes with properties and associations that provide
a well-understood conceptual framework within which it is possible to
organize the available information about the managed environment.
The CIM Schema itself is structured into three distinct layers:
1. The Core Schema is an information model that captures notions
that are applicable to all areas of management.
2. Common Schemas are information models that capture notions that
are common to particular management areas, but independent of a
particular technology or implementation. The common areas are systems,
devices, networks, applications, metrics, databases, the physical
environment, event definition and handling, management of a CIM
infrastructure (the Interoperability Model), users and security, policy
and trouble ticketing/ knowledge exchange (the Support Model). These
models define classes addressing each of the management areas in a
vendor-neutral manner.
3. Extension Schemas represent organizational or vendor-specific
extensions of the Common Schema. These schemas can be specific to
environments, such as operating systems (for example, UNIX? or Microsoft
Windows?). Extension Schema fall into two categories,
Technology-Specific areas such UNIX98 or Product-Specific areas that are
unique to a particular product such as Windows.
The formal definition of the CIM Schema is expressed in a Managed Object
File (MOF) which is an ASCII or UNICODE file that can be used as input
into an MOF editor, parser or compiler for use in an application.
The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is used to visually portray the
structure of the CIM Schema.