Re: review Semantic Integration note





All,

Apologies for the late review comments, squeezing time of my work schedule
if proving difficult at present.

With reference to (http://cmenzel.org/w3c/SemanticInterop.html) :

Abstract

1.    “Semantic interoperability means enabling different agents, services,
and applications to exchange information, data and knowledge, on and off
the Web. To enable semantic interoperability agents, services, and
applications need to share the same mutually understood vocabulary or to
create correspondences or mappings between their different vocabularies”.
Would have preferred a more generalised statement such as “Semantic
interoperability means enabling different artefacts such as agents,
services, and applications to coalesce via exchange information, data and
knowledge, on and off the Web. To achieve this such artefacts need to
either share mutually understood vocabularies or have access to
correspondences and transformations between their different terminologies”
2.    “We highlight their strengths and limitations” replace with “We
highlight the strengths and limitations of current Semantic Web approaches”
3.    I would not highlight any main advantages or disadvantages in the
abstract, this is detail for later in the note.

Introduction:

1.    Prefer the wording: “Semantic Web languages, such as RDF and OWL,
enhance opportunities for automated interoperability in a number of ways.
For instance they can provide localised contexts and technical framework to
reuse existing ontologies. This is achieved by providing formal mechanisms
to express formal relationships between classes and properties from
different information or solution spaces. The goal of this note is,
therefore, to give users and application developers a brief introduction to
the concept of Semantic Interoperability and Integration in order for them
to exploit languages like OWL effectively. Nevertheless, ultimately, it is
up to the users to reuse ontologies and the relationships between them in
an appropriate manner.”

Use Cases:
1.    Sorry, but this section looks very rough. At the very least I would
mention that only a few examples are listed here.

What do we mean by Semantic Interoperability & Integration
1.    Para 1 – replace “across ontologies” with “across isolated
ontologies”
2.    Para 2 “The terms ‘semantic interoperability’ and ‘semantic
integration’ are often used loosely and somewhat interchangeably”…Might be
better as “The terms ‘semantic interoperability’ and ‘semantic integration’
are often confused and used to mean the same thing”
3.    Para 2 – Replace “The core idea for both is the existence of and
desire to bridge a semantic gap between different systems or applications
that use different vocabularies” with…”The core idea of both is to achieve
the amalgamation or interchange of assets that share semantically identical
concepts, descriptions and terms. These are often aggregated into data
stores such as referencable vocabularies”
4.    Para 2 – Replace “The main difference is an architectural one” with
“The main differences, hence predominantly relate to Information
Architecture”
5.    Para 3. It is dangerous to generalise on the term “agent”. This
invoke an image of “activity” as in the notion of “process”. Would be
better to use the term “asset” – its much more inert.
6.    Para 3 – Better not make an explicit commercial reference such as
“Verizon”…In fact don’t like the rest of this para…sorry!

Semantic I&I and the Semantic Web: Some Basic Guidelines

1.    Para 1- Again I do not see that “social structure” is of real
relevance here.
2.    Para 2 – Replace “The Semantic Web activity in the W3C made a
significant advance on the language heterogeneity problem through the
introduction of formal  recommendations for several standard XML-based
ontology languages, notably, RDF, RDF Schema (RDFS) and OWL. The  syntax
and semantics of these languages are open, well-defined standards.” With
“The W3C’s Semantic Web activity has led to a number of advances in the
integration space with the  formal graph-based languages such as RDF, RDF
Schema (RDFS) and OWL.”
3.    Principle 1: To facilitate semantic I&I, create new ontologies in
OWL. – Instead of aggressively promoting OWL like this it might be better
to just suggest “standardising on an implementation approach using a
language such as OWL”
4.    Principle 2: To facilitate semantic I&I, translate existing
ontologies into OWL – You need to clarify “more expensive” in much more
detail, or leave out completely.


Sorry, just been called out to a meeting. I’ll try and add more comments
over the next week or two. Hope this small contribution helps for now.

Best Regards,

Philip Tetlow
Senior Consultant (Certified Technical Architect)
IBM Business Consulting Services

Mail: IBM United Kingdom Limited, 1175 Century Way, Thorpe Park, Colton,
Leeds, LS15 8ZB
Mobile: +44 (0)7740 923328
Email: philip.tetlow@uk.ibm.com


                                                                           
             Guus Schreiber                                                
             <schreiber@cs.vu.                                             
             nl>                                                        To 
             Sent by:                  Phil Tetlow/UK/IBM@IBMGB, Giorgos   
             public-swbp-wg-re         Stamou <gstam@softlab.ntua.gr>,     
             quest@w3.org              Fabien Gandon                       
                                       <Fabien.Gandon@sophia.inria.fr>     
                                                                        cc 
             20/03/2006 14:55          SWBPD list <public-swbp-wg@w3.org>  
                                                                   Subject 
                                       review Semantic Integration note    
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           





Phil, Giorgos, Fabien,

You said some time ago that you were willing to review the Semantic
Integration note. Mike Uschold produced a few weeks ago a new editor's
draft [1]. Could you still do the review?

Thanks,
Guus

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swbp-wg/2006Feb/0170.html

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Received on Tuesday, 28 March 2006 15:04:04 UTC