Re: SUO: Negotiation Instead of Legislation
Chris,
Our major disagreement is about the number. I agree that a reference
ontology is useful. But that is very different from any requirement
or even suggestion that anyone should actually use it.
> I have found that having a reference ontology is, among other things,
> extremely helpful to people, even experienced people, who are
building > a new ontology. It tells you where to start. Even the upper
level
> ontology published in your book, John (flawed as I may think it is),
> has proven incredibly useful as an analysis tool to people building
> OO, DB, KR, etc. ontologies. It has been better to have it around
> than to banish it because some people (like me) don't agree with it.
I agree with the principle, although I think my ontology is less
flawed than any others I have ever seen. Even then, I would not
recommend it as a standard.
> Personally, as I've said on the SUO several times, I believe there
> should be more than one, but still a small number, of SUOs. The first
> step in developing a negotiated ontology should be to pick the SUO to
> use.
One point I make is that in any kind of design or architecture for
anything, there are only three numbers that need no justification:
zero, one, and infinity. Any "small number" greater than 1 requires
a very rigorous proof of adequacy. Otherwise, it is just a grossly
inadequate approximation to infinity.
The other point of disagreement is whether you begin the negotiation
from some top-down legislated SUO or from some bottom-up discovery
procedure, which determines what the critical categories really are.
The method I recommend in the slides is top-down for the superficial
stuff (i.e., something like WordNet), and bottom-up for the stuff
that really matters to the application (i.e., the stuff you really
axiomatize).
In any case, please look at the slides, the recommended approach,
and the example (which has been successfully implemented for a
large -- 9000 employees -- company).
John