RE: WebOnt General Requirements Subgroup - Initial E-mail

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>My comments inserted below.
>
>Ned M. Smith
>Intel Architecture Labs          Phone: 503.264.2692
>2111 N.E. 25th Ave               Fax: 503.264.6225
>Hillsoboro OR. 97124            mailto:ned.smith@intel.com
>
>
>>  -----Original Message-----
>>  From: Dan Connolly [mailto:connolly@w3.org]
>>  Sent: Monday, December 10, 2001 1:20 PM
>>  To: Pat Hayes
>>  Cc: Jeff Heflin; Deborah McGuinness; ned.smith@intel.com;
>>  jeremy_carroll@hp.com; jos.deroo.jd@belgium.agfa.com;
>>  herman.ter.horst@philips.com; hendler@cs.umd.edu;
>>  www-archive@w3.org Subject: Re: WebOnt General Requirements
>>  Subgroup - Initial E-mail 
>>
>>
>>  Pat Hayes wrote:
>>  >
>>  > >Deborah,
>>  > >
>>  > >Thanks, your arguments have convinced me. In fact, I now think
>>  > >the multi-user issues and difference and merging are closely
>>  > >related to requirements I had listed.
>>  > >
>>  > >Everyone, I think it would be helpful if we can try to
>>  identify how the
>>  > >various candidate requirements (original list from Jim,
>>  Deborah's list,
>>  > >my list) are related. Here is my first cut at such a mapping:
>>  > >
>>  > >Jeff's                 Deborah's               Original list
>>  > >-------------------    --------------------  
>>  > >------------------- shared meaning         multi-user
>>  > >ontology reuse         extensible
>>  > >ontology evolution     versioning              versioning
>>  > >interoperability       diff and merge          domain mapping
>>  > >inconsistency                                  inconsistency
>>  > >scalability            scalability             large ontologies
>
>The scalability requirements ought to be sensitive to small
>ontologies also (or more precisely, highly granular distributed
>ontologies) ala purvasive sensors/actuators and other small devices
>that may describe themselves via ontology and be linked to other
>devices where the conglomerate is also an ontology.

Is, or is connected via ? The idea that a conglomerate of devices IS 
an ontology is an interesting and (to me) novel idea.

>An "ontology web"
>or "web of ontologies" has been mentioned on the list. Is scalability
>the one word that captures all this?

Yes, I wonder quite what 'scalability' is supposed to mean. Maybe an 
example of something that isn't scaleable would be helpful (?)

>
>>  > >user-friendly          ease of use
>>  > >data persistence
>>  > >                       security
>>  > >                       XML interfaces
>>  > >                       internationalization
>>  > >                                              
>>  ontology-based search
>>  > >                                               ontology querying
>
>I see search and query as being distinct capabilities. Search implies
>understanding of physical layout of the ontology web.

Ah, that is a different sense of 'search' than the one I was 
understanding. We need to distinguish between searching-1 the web for 
relevant content, and searching-2 for valid inferences from a given 
ontology (one that has maybe been constructed as a result of a 
searching-1 process, for example.)

>While Query
>implies knowledge of the logical structure of the ontology.
>
>>  > >
>>  > >Although this table only shows Deborah's "multiple users"
>>  requirement
>>  > >mapped to my "shared meaning" requirement, I think it also
>>  maps to my
>>  > >"ontology reuse" and "ontology evolution" requirements.
>>  > >
>>  > >Everyone, I'd like you to look at this table and decide if
>>  you agree
>>  > >with my mappings.
>>
>>  That's a lot of stuff. Do I agree that "security"
>>  is a requirement? er... in some form, yes, of course.
>
>My opinion, security is almost always anomalistic and if ignored can
>motivate a complete re-design to get it right. The Tim Berners-Lee
>layer cake suggests that security is a vertical slice topped with
>"trust".
>
>I find it more effective to think about security as a vertical slice,
>that affects every layer, rather than a horizontal layer - which is
>tempting to push above or below.

I agree entirely. For example, without some security at the lowest 
transfer-protocol level, one is dead in the water. This seems so 
obvious that I have always assumed that Tim's cake-top was meant to 
denote something like 'reasoning about trust' rather than 'functional 
security', and to refer to the no doubt rather arcane inferences that 
an agent might use to conclude trustworthiness, rather than to the 
low-level machinery of secure information transfer and so on.

>The use cases that motivate security
>requirements ought to be derived from Edward Felton's work on proof
>carrying authorization[1] and other work in distributed trust
>management[2].

Again, I agree this work is relevant.

>
>The question in my mind for WOWG to determine is how should
>"SpeaksFor" and "Says" relations be expressed/represented in an
>ontology language? The implication being that there is a need to
>create ontologies of trust networks and to identify the data
>attributes that are trust worthy (having satisfied access control
>preconditions). Subtly, this implies attributes can carry state and
>that there exists some evidence (proof) that the state is an
>appropriate state.

For what its worth, there is some ongoing work (not yet published) on 
applying DAML+OIL to reasoning about software agent 
actions/permissions/obligations which several of the participants 
here are involved with, I believe.

>
>[1] A Proof-Carrying Authorization System, Lujo Bauer, Michael A
>Schneider, Edward Felton, Princeton University, Tech Report
>TR-638-01, April 30, 2001
>
>[2] Moving from Security to Distributed Trust in Ubiquitous Computing
>Environments, Lalana Kagal, Tim Finn, Anupam Joshi, University of
>Maryland, (to appear) IEEE Computer, December 2001.
>
>I'm a little concerned that the time schedule won't allow us to
>consider these elements carefully enough. I'm also struggling to
>understand where an ontology language like DAML+OIL ends and an
>ontology like DAML-S begins relative to security and trust.

I would urge that the basic picture should be that access to the 
content expressed in the DAML+OIL is the primary resource that needs 
to be made secure, since that access would enable any 'higher' 
information about trust issues to be tampered with. In other words, 
it cannot possibly be sufficient to have an insecure ontology of 
security, since that cannot guarantee any security over content.

Pat


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Received on Monday, 10 December 2001 18:49:42 UTC