SUO: Yet Another Roman Numeral Based Ontology Language (YARNBOL)
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Francis, Edward, & All,
I have put my observations in the heading,
since I sense that is where we are headed.
Cheers, Anyway,
Jon Awbrey
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Francis G. McCabe wrote:
>
> At the risk of opening up some wounds,
> I would like to bring people's attention
> to some recent developments at OMG and
> possible implications for the SUO.
>
> OMG has traditionally been a `plumbing' oriented organization.
> However, things are changing.
>
> 1. UML has had a significantly greater take up in industry than CORBA;
> this is now being reflected in an increased emphasis on abstract
> modelling over hard plumbing. For those that dont know, UML
> is a graphical language that has been effectively used for
> a variety of tasks. It does have a formal semantics,
> which is ultimately based on OCL which is a 1st order
> constraint language, not a million miles away from FOL.
>
> 2. OMG has always had a very rich domain orientation.
> Fully half of the activities are in areas such as
> medical, space science, real-time, business etc.
> etc.
>
> 3. The `O' word is cropping up more and more in OMG circles.
>
> 4. Earlier this week there was an Ontology workshop held as part of
> the Agents SIG. (Adam Pease gave an effective talk about the SUO)
>
> Several things stood out here: the OMG needs Ontologies
> and is beginning to know it; and there is a rich source
> of raw material for developing Ontologies. For the OMG
> community, and my guess is for the business community
> at large also, using UML as the primary vehicle for
> generating Ontologies would make a lot more sense
> than using KIF, or even an XML version of KIF.
>
> This is where there may be some pain: if the SUO community were to
> adopt UML/OCL (with possible extensions) as a preferred Ontology
> representation language, then I believe that the `take up' of
> the SUO would be greater and faster.
>
> Incidentally, UML has rich support for things like packages
> as well as support for representing dynamic processes;
> neither of which are currently well handled by KIF
> (in whatever flavour).
>
> The bottom line is this: is the SUO effort a primarily academic exercise,
> or is there willingness to use the tools of Industry to reach Industry?
>
> Francis McCabe <fgm@fla.fujitsu.com>
> Fujitsu Labs of America
>
> Francis McCabe
> Fujitsu Labs of America <fgm@fla.fujitsu.com>
> Work: +1 408 530 4549
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Edward Dawidowicz wrote:
>
> I would tend to agree that UML graphical representation
> adds at least a valuable dimension to the development work
> in ontology. UML software has proven to be a valuable tool
> in developing software and even organizational architectures.
>
> However, does it have all of the 'bells and whistles'
> to qualify to be a serious tool in modeling ontologies?
>
> And
>
> Would UML become a precursor for OML (Ontology Modeling language) tool?
>
> Edward Dawidowicz
>
> US Army, CECOM, RDEC
> Command and Control Directorate
> Tel: (732) 427-4122 DSN 987-4122
> Fax (732) 427-3440
> E-Mail edward.dawidowicz@mail1.monmouth.army.mil
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