Re: Brainstorming Idea: Set up an online testbed
I strongly agree with Mehrnoush Shamsfard:
> I still believe that working to create a technology to map
> various ontologies with various perspectives is more important
> than creating standards. Maybe the core principles or beliefs
> or concepts or ... should be the same in various ontologies
> (I'm not sure about) I just know that none of us has a unique
> standard mental ontology same as the others, but we can more
> or less understand each other. It seems that what we have in
> common is not the standard upper ontology as we use in computer
> systems. Discussing this matter can help to create ontologies
> which are not standard but can be used for interoperability.
The requirement that two systems must have *identical* ontologies
before they can work together is unrealistic.
For example, we can all interoperate by email to this list,
despite the fact that we all have very different background
knowledge and points of view. And computers have been working
together across various networks for over 40 years without
having explicit ontologies.
Before we can state requirements for ontologies that support
interoperability, we must determine what enables current
systems to interoperate and what more would be useful.
Some questions:
1. How do current systems, even without formal ontologies,
interoperate? What is required for those operations?
Is there a single kind of requirement or many different
kinds for different kinds of systems or applications?
2. People have been working together for millennia without
aligning everything they know before they even start.
How do they work together? What can we learn from that?
3. What improvements would a common ontology confer?
For what kinds of systems or applications?
4. There are many ontologies being developed today with little
or no coordination among them. How can systems based on
them interoperate with each other and with legacy systems?
These are some of the questions that must be addressed before
we can formulate any realistic requirements for ontologies.
Without some idea of what we mean by interoperability, it is
pointless to try to establish standards to support it.
John Sowa