RE: [SE] Ontology Driven Architectures

Holger,

You are of course absolutely correct. The idea of freely publishing
interlinked models on the web is indeed one of the key concepts to which
the SE task force - and the SWBP working group as Chris Welty quire rightly
states - should aspire. So far I have only submitted one section of the
text I am working on for discussion on the SWBP mailing list. I am also
compiling a list of links relevant to this area. Your paper is close to the
top of that list and if you are aware of any other similar works that we
can reference I would be grateful if you could pass on the relevant URL's.

One question. I personally see Ontology Driven Architectures and your term
"Semantic Web Driven Development" as being one and the same thing. For me
it is kind of irrelevant whether ontologies are intrinsic to 'traditional'
design artifacts or distinct entities in their own right. The important
thing is that they cross reference at as many points in the
software/systems lifecycle as is relevant - this may well be at both design
and run time. Given that the more traditional sectors of our profession,
currently using SE methods, may not be overly familiar with the inner
workings of the Semantic Web, I thought it best not to overload initial
descriptions of ODA with differing flavours of approach, preferring instead
to highlight the possibilities of close cohesion between semi-formal
methods and more formal semantic languages. Your mail has now made me think
differently and I now consider that we should include your option for
referencing external ontologies as part of our early drafts, highlighting
the loose coupling angle as well. Or do you think that this approach
warrants its own title;namely "Semantic Web Driven Development"?...


This is a subject that I'd like to pick up on in our task force telecons,
I'm sure there is much we can discuss.

Regards

Phil Tetlow
Senior Consultant
IBM Business Consulting Services
Mobile. (+44) 7740 923328


                                                                           
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                                       RE: [SE] Ontology Driven            
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> You should know that this has been tried before and failed.
> The problem was that the ontology, as an independent artifact,
> needed to be maintained to stay relevant, but after requirements,
> specification, and design were complete, the ontology was no
> longer strictly needed for maintenance of the software, and
> like documentation, fell out of synch with the software and became
> less useful.  It is extremely difficult to convince people that
> they need to maintain all these artifacts along with the software.

I think in addition to regarding ontologies as a design artifact for
other software models and code, we should not forget that ontologies
themselves can be development results.  By encoding explicit semantics
in ontologies we make them executable by reasoners.  While ontologies
failed to add value in development processes in the past, the situation
is different in the context of the Semantic Web:  On the Web, anyone is
free to publish ontologies directly as OWL or RDF files, with no need
to derive other artifacts from them.  As an example consider the travel
domain (which I described in [1]): Here, simply by publishing an OWL
ontology, the execution logic of another application is modified.  Yet,
there is a link between the application and the external extension
ontologies by means of a core ontology, which is hard-coded in the
application.  However, anyone is free to extend such core ontologies,
and these are independent from any code in the application, but could
also be used in hundreds of other applications.

All that I am saying is that in addition to Ontology Driven Development,
there is also a notion of "Semantic Web Driven Development" which requires
guidelines and tools.  The idea of freely publishing interlinked models
on the web, instead of using them only as intermediate artifacts, will be a
killer argument in favor of ontologies.

Holger

[1] http://smi-web.stanford.edu/people/holger/publications/MDSW2004.pdf

Received on Thursday, 6 January 2005 09:05:54 UTC