- From: Leo Obrst <lobrst@mitre.org>
- Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 13:18:46 -0500
- To: Pat Hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>, Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>, Herman ter Horst <herman.ter.horst@philips.com>, Mike Dean <mdean@bbn.com>, Deborah McGuinness <dlm@ksl.stanford.edu>
- CC: www-archive@w3.org
All, Welcome! I have condensed what I saw mentioned concerning content interoperability so far and list it below. As you can see, these are very sketchy working points so far. Let's send mail among our group to try to elaborate the use case, define our terms, e.g., is "content interoperability" the same as "semantic interoperability". I noticed in Jim Hendler's more recent message, that he weakened/loosened the use case to be simply "Interoperability", something I think we need to address immediately. I personally prefer "content interoperability" as our focus, and largely equate this with "semantic interoperability". But let me know what you all think. 1) USE CASE: Content Interoperability (a/k/a/ agent markup) (compiled from WOWG messages) - RDF has advantage over XML in allowing easy merging of content found on different sites/resources, and the use of the combined sources. DAML+OIL may offer additional advantage. Use cases include linking of databases (DB schemas), coupling data to pages, linking instance data to ontologies. Also allows linking of ontology to ontology for mapping of vocabulary, etc. In general, the issue of semantic mapping. - Adapation of content to user/device. The content exists in some form (ontology), and needs to be translated to another form (ontology) for use by a different user or device. - Finally, the notion of condradiction/inconsistencies: when we integrate heterogeneous content, then we need a means for detecting and resolving inconsistencies. 2) This is a message I sent out recently to the X318-news@nist.gov group, who are interested in terminology standards, among other things, suggesting one definition of "semantic interoperability". Specifically the requester was working on the draft ISO standard on Requirements for Electronic Health Records Architecture and referred to the 11179/3 standard which defined semantic interoperability as (paraphrased): "ensuring that the receiver understands the data as intended by the sender" -- which I do not like at all. One obvious issue is whether the semantics will be machine intepretable or just a human agreement (as most standards up to now have been). My reply: We did a study of semantic interoperability in 1999 and defined it (from the perspective of interoperating object-based systems) in our paper: · Obrst, L., G. Whittaker, A. Meng. Semantic Interoperability via Context Interpretation, submitted to Context-99, Trento, Italy, April, 1999, invited poster session. A related and shorter paper is: · Obrst, L., G. Whittaker, A. Meng. Semantic Context for Object Exchange, AAAI Workshop on Context in AAI Applications, Orlando, FL, July 19, 1999. >From the 1st paper: Semantic interoperability is defined as the enablement of software systems ... to interoperate at a level in which the exchange of information is at the enterprise [or community] level. This means each system (or object of a system) can map from its own conceptual model to the conceptual model of other systems, thereby ensuring that the meaning of their information is transmitted, accepted, understood, and used across the enterprise [or community]. We argue that the primary way by which semantic interoperability can be realized is by defining a notion of context which includes the object to be exchanged and its internal state, its interpretation with respect to both the source and the target system object models, and the particular use of and intent for the object in both the source and target systems. Thanks, Leo ps. I suggest we archive these as Dan has suggested, by cc-ing www-archive@w3.org. Or should we just post our discussions to the general list: www-webont-wg@w3.org? Another alternative is to investigate and create a special Yahoo group (but also archive to the above). What do people think? -- _____________________________________________ Dr. Leo Obrst The MITRE Corporation mailto:lobrst@mitre.org Intelligent Information Management/Exploitation Voice: 703-883-6770 7515 Colshire Drive, M/S W640 Fax: 703-883-1379 McLean, VA 22102-7508, USA
Received on Monday, 10 December 2001 13:19:33 UTC