Re: Does standardisation assume interoperability?

Looking at the tracker, I don't think was resolved?

Others have given ample evidence that standards are not always 
interoperable. Personally, I favour removing

• R-MetadataInteroperable
• R-LicenseInteroperable

And offer these definitions (which build on the existing ones in the UCR)

• R-MetadataMachineRead

Metadata should be machine-readable, i.e. structured and available 
primarily for consumption by machines rather than in natural language text.

• R-MetadataStandardized

Metadata should be standardized, i.e. follow a recognized approach that 
maximizes usefulness and interoperability.

In other words, you've got more chance of matching up X and Y if X and Y 
both follow standards then if they don't, but there's no guarantee that 
they will match 1 - 1.

On licenses I'm more hesitant as I'm wary of the WG committing to more 
than it can deliver. This time next week I may know whether a new 
project is going ahead that should help to increase the capacity of the 
group but for now, I rather like the existing definition which says:

R-LicenseAvailable

Data should be associated with a license. License is a type of metadata, 
so all metadata requirements also apply here.

(I'd reword that slightly to: Data should be associated with a license. 
A license is a type of metadata so the requirements concerning machine 
readability and standardization of metadata also apply here.)

Phil.



On 29/08/2014 11:38, Lee, Deirdre wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> In today's call I would like if possible to make a decision on this...
>
> Should we keep the following requirements:
>
>       •R-MetadataInteroperable
>       •R-LicenseInteroperable
>
> In addition to the following requirements are defined:
>
>       •R-MetadataMachineRead
>       •R-MetadataStandardized
>
>       •R-LicenseMachineRead
>       •R-LicenseStandardized
>
> Discussion at https://www.w3.org/2013/dwbp/track/issues/23
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Antoine Isaac [mailto:aisaac@few.vu.nl]
> Sent: 22 August 2014 13:05
> To: public-dwbp-wg@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Does standardisation assume interoperability?
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm not sure that discussing too much interoperability will help us get a quick solution. In fact in what Deirdre put below, item (c) implies that (a) and (b) are not necessary (they're just 'standard-focused' rewriting of (c) )
>
> I don't understand what Joao Paulo said. He proposed to get rid of the the *Standardized requirements but he suggests to add them back, in practice.
>
> In the end I would just keep
> R-MetadataStandardized, making the point that standard should address the model, documentation and interoperability (as it should, see the intro at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization)
> R-MetadataMachineReadable, assuming this includes format concerns (which with the first requirement gives you standardized formats).
>
> Best,
>
> Antoine
>
> On 8/11/14 4:40 PM, Lee, Deirdre wrote:
>> Thanks for your input Giancarlo and Laufer. Is it fair to summarise as follows:
>>
>> Two datasets are interoperable if:
>>
>> a.They are modelled according to the same standard.
>>
>> b.They are modelled according to standards that are interoperable
>>
>> c.They are modelled according to the same formal representation (not necessarily standardised)
>>
>> (b) corresponds to a case where we know how the meaning of the elements in each standard relate to the elements in the other standard.
>>
>> (c) corresponds to the case where you have used a reference ontology to facilitate the interoperability of ECG data.
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Deirdre Lee
>>
>> Research Associate
>>
>> eGovernment Domain (DEG)
>>
>> Insight-NUIG
>>
>> IDA BusinessPark, Lower Dangan,
>>
>> Galway, Ireland
>>
>> deirdre.lee@deri.org <mailto:deirdre.lee@deri.org>
>> skype: deirdrelee
>>
>> twitter: @deirdrelee
>>
>> linkedin: ie.linkedin.com/in/leedeirdre/ <http://ie.linkedin.com/in/leedeirdre/>
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> *From:*Giancarlo Guizzardi [mailto:gguizzardi@gmail.com]
>> *Sent:* 11 August 2014 09:00
>> *To:* Laufer
>> *Cc:* Lee, Deirdre; Data on the Web Best Practices Working Group
>> *Subject:* Re: Does standardisation assume interoperability?
>>
>> Folks,
>>
>> Regarding the two questions:
>>
>> (a) Does standardization entail interoperability?
>>
>> and (b) Can something be interoperable without being standardized?
>>
>> Let us first settled what we mean by interoperability.
>>
>> I will start with the following working definition of semantic interoperability:
>>
>> A model X is semantically interoperable with model Y if we know
>>
>> how the meaning of the elements in X relate to the meaning of elements in Y.
>>
>> If we take "meaning" in the sense of referential semantics, this means that
>>
>> we can always relate in the correct manner
>>
>> the referents of the model elements in X with the referents
>>
>> of the model elements in Y.
>>
>> With that in mind (and answering (b)), we can achieve interoperability whenever we are able
>>
>> to establish and fully understand the relation between the referents of X and Y.
>>
>> Good standards certainly facilitate that.
>>
>> However, if we put the question as "standardization ENTAILS interoperability" (question a),
>>
>> the answer is clearly no.  To put it simply, this is because (among other reasons, including non-technical ones...)
>>
>> there are bad standards. Bad standards in the sense that they are not sufficiently expressive and clear in helping
>>
>> users to express their world views in terms of the standard.
>>
>> There are many examples of domains with multiple standards
>>
>> that it is far from obvious how to relate the meaning of things
>>
>> in standard X and with the meaning of things in standard Y.
>>
>> This is even the case in the so-called hard science domains.
>>
>> To cite on example in heart Electrophysiogy.
>>
>> In the following paper
>>
>> http://www.j-biomed-inform.com/article/S1532-0464(10)00118-8/pdf
>>
>> we show the difficulties in relating multiple existing ECG standards.
>>
>> The paper is actually both an example of lack interoperability with
>>
>> the presence of multiple standards as well as an example of
>>
>> interoperability achieved with a reference ontology that is
>>
>> not a standard, i.e., "interoperability without a standard".
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Giancarlo
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 9, 2014 at 3:04 AM, Laufer <laufer@globo.com <mailto:laufer@globo.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I don´t know if the following example makes sense to this discussion. But it comes to my mind.
>>
>> Analog television has some different standards as, for example, PAL and NTSC, and they are not interoperable.
>>
>> I don´t know if, in this case, the term should be compatible.
>>
>> Best,
>> Laufer
>>
>> 2014-08-08 11:43 GMT-03:00 Lee, Deirdre <Deirdre.Lee@deri.org <mailto:Deirdre.Lee@deri.org>>:
>>
>>      Hi,
>>
>>      We had a good call today, addressing many of the raised issues for UCR. One issue that we felt warranted more discussion was /ISSUE-23: Review definition of interoperability/ https://www.w3.org/2013/dwbp/track/issues/23
>>
>>      The following questions were raised: Does standardisation imply interoperability? Are there cases where data uses standards, but is not interoperable? Can interoperability be achieved independent of standardisation? In DWBP, should we have a specific definition of interoperability?
>>
>>      In the UCR, there are the following two requirements:
>>
>>      ·R-MetadataInteroperable
>>
>>      ·R-LicenseInteroperable
>>
>>      And also
>>
>>      ·R-MetadataMachineRead
>>
>>      ·R-MetadataStandardized
>>
>>      ·R-LicenseMachineRead
>>
>>      ·R-LicenseStandardized
>>
>>      Possible resolutions for the UCR could be:
>>
>>      a.Remove R–MetadataInteroperable and R-LicenseInteroperable from UCR because they’re redundant
>>
>>      b.Improve description of R-MetadataStandardized and R-LicenseStandardized
>>
>>      c.Other?
>>
>>      Cheers,
>>
>>      Deirdre
>>
>>      -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>      Deirdre Lee
>>
>>      Research Associate
>>
>>      eGovernment Domain (DEG)
>>
>>      Insight-NUIG
>>
>>      IDA BusinessPark, Lower Dangan,
>>
>>      Galway, Ireland
>>
>>      deirdre.lee@deri.org <mailto:deirdre.lee@deri.org>
>>      skype: deirdrelee
>>
>>      twitter: @deirdrelee
>>
>>      linkedin: ie.linkedin.com/in/leedeirdre/ <http://ie.linkedin.com/in/leedeirdre/>
>>
>>      -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> .  .  .  .. .  .
>> .        .   . ..
>> .     ..       .
>>
>

-- 


Phil Archer
W3C Data Activity Lead
http://www.w3.org/2013/data/

http://philarcher.org
+44 (0)7887 767755
@philarcher1

Received on Tuesday, 16 September 2014 11:23:08 UTC