Re: RE: Rich semantics and expressiveness

Hans,
Your concern is very close to mine !
Suppose even if to narrow the problem only to ERP2ERP communications
with radical shortening of taking part the "slow and error-prone"
human factor and only to the Product topic there must be done a new
breakthrough in the topic.
Some directions I mentioned in the "To keep abreast of the 21st
Century" paper - http://www.ototsky.mgn.ru/it/21abreast.htm .
Later I "provided" only one mentioned topic. Namely a using the Viable
System Model (VSM) of Stafford Beer as Upper Ontology for future IT.
See the Metaphorum-2005 and Metaphorum-2006 presentations -
http://www.ototsky.mgn.ru/it/abroad_menu.html
Some directions are pointed out for the Metaphorum-2007 presentation
- http://www.ototsky.mgn.ru/it/papers/metaphorum2007.pdf .

Suppose it is good to think beyond the current SW activity to a next
generation of the Intellectual Web.

Best,
Leonid Ototsky - http://ototsky.mgn.ru/it

> Folks,
>  
> In this context I would like to bring up something that keeps puzzling me.
>  
> The W3C Semantic Web Activity Statement [1] starts with:
>  
> "The goal of the Semantic Web initiative is as broad as that of
> the Web: to create a universal medium for the exchange of data. It
> is envisaged to smoothly interconnect personal information
> management, enterprise application integration, and the global
> sharing of commercial, scientific and cultural data. Facilities to
> put machine-understandable data on the Web are quickly becoming a
> high priority for many organizations, individuals and communities."
>  
> This is great, and it is what we strive for. But it is puzzling
> how this can ever be achieved without a universal, generic,
> data-driven model and standard data to drive that model. What I see
> happening is that everybody can and often does invent instances of
> owl:Class and owl:ObjectProperty on-the-fly, and then seems to
> expect that DL will be the band-aid that solves all integration
> problems. In order to assist the reasoners all sorts of
> qualifications are added (re OWL1.1), but to me it seems that when
> this is done, actually a (rather private) data model is created
> again.
>  
> Above statement envisages the "smooth interconnection" of a
> plethora of totally different application domains. That is wise,
> because we live in one integrated universe (domain), and nobody can
> dictate where one subdomain stops and the other begins. Hence the
> need for a universal model as a common denominator. But it is
> striking that the word "interconnection" was used, rather than
> "integration". Interconnection reminds me of EAI [2], so hub-based
> or point-to-point, where Semantic Web integration (as I understand
> it) involves a web-based distributed data base.
>  
> Keeping in mind that, as I wrote before in this thread,
> application systems store a lot of implicit data (or actually don't
> store them), the direct mapping of their data to the SW formats will
> cause more problems than its solves. They are based on their own
> proprietary data model, and these are unintelligible for other,
> equally proprietary, data models.
>  
> The thing puzzling me is how the SW community can see what I
> cannot see, and that is how on earth you can achieve what your
> Activity Statement says, without such a standard generic data model
> and derived standard reference data (taxonomy and ontology). But
> perhaps not many SW-ers bother about the need of universal
> integration, and are happily operating within their own subdomain,
> such as FOAF.
>  
> Can anybody enlighten me, at least by pointing to some useful links?
>  
> Regards,
> Hans
>  
> PS The above does not mean that I have no faith in the SW. On the
> contrary, I preach the SW gospel. But I just want to understand
> where it is moving to.
>  
> [1] http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Activity
> [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_Application_Integration
>  
> ____________________
> OntoConsult
> Hans Teijgeler
> ISO 15926 specialist
> Netherlands
> +31-72-509 2005
> www.InfowebML.ws
> hans.teijgeler@quicknet.nl
>  
>  



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Received on Sunday, 4 March 2007 20:06:12 UTC