RE: A NEW FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT FORMAL MOTION: was RE: SUO: Re: SUO Ballot with 2 Questions
Hi Matthew;
Thanks for answering my initial set of questions. I don't think we are
terribly far from understanding why we view the standards process so
differently - and why we are, as you say, both right.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: West, Matthew R SITI-ITPSIE [mailto:matthew.west@shell.com]
> Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 11:00 AM
> To: Eric Peterson; John F. Sowa; Mike Pool; apease@ks.teknowledge.com;
> clegg@cyc.com; John DeOliveira
> Cc: Patrick Cassidy; standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> Subject: RE: A NEW FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT FORMAL MOTION: was RE: SUO:
Re:
> SUO Ballot with 2 Questions
>
[ELP]
<snip>
> > > > WHEREAS, a standards committee is about the most ill suited body
> > >
> > > MW: Apart from all the others (if consensus is your objective).
> >
> > [ELP] I'm sorry, I don't understand you comment. My addled mind
> > requires full sentences and painfully obvious pronoun reference ;^)
>
> MW: This was an eliptical reference to Winston Churchill's statement
> "democracy is the worst possible for of government ... apart
> from all the others."
[ELP] Thanks, I read a Churchill biography a few months back. I should
have caught the reference. We Yanks seem to recast that quote into our
vernacular when we cite it so I didn't recognize the piece of the pure
rendering.
>
> MW: My take would read in full "Standards committees are the worst
> possible bodies for creating a large and complex standard ...
> apart from all the others."
[ELP] Right. Thanks.
> >
> > >
> > > > imaginable for crafting/engineering or perhaps even merging
> > components
> > > > into a large and complex standard (such as an SUO), and
> > > >
> > > > WHEREAS, only unified hierarchical bodies such as companies
> > > > are known to
> > > > craft/engineer large technical results of quality, and
> > >
> > > MW: Well I've worked in standards organisations that managed this.
> >
> > [ELP] Please tell us more:
> > What were the standards?
>
> MW:1. Integration of Lifecycle data for process plant including oil
and
> gas production facilities. It is a data model and reference data that
> should collectively be described as an ontology that was light on
> axioms.
[ELP] About how many tables/entities/classes and attributes did you end
up with? Roughly, how many pieces of "reference data" per attribute did
you specify? How far did this data go beyond typical data dictionary
contents?
>
> MW: 2. Intergation of Industrial Data for Exchange Access and Sharing.
[ELP] Same questions as above.
<snip>
> > [ELP] "Standardization"
> ("http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary";) is not
> creation. "Standardization" is a transitive verb and therefore
requires
> something to be standardized. Wouldn't we agree that the thing to be
> standardized is "practice" - that we are specifying a standard
practice?
>
> MW: Standards can do a number of things. Many certainly do standardise
> practice in the procedure sense. But this is not the only sort.
Standards
> can be specifications for products, or just statements of facts. Of
course
> I think conforming to a standard usually involves some activity.
[ELP] Right. "practice" wasn't the best word I could have chosen.
>
> How many years were your draft standards used and proven before
> declaring them to be standards?
>
> MW: In practice it is a multistage process, where you declare a
"standard"
> and then people examine it and perhaps do trial implementations, raise
> issues, you respond and produce a new version, and after a few cycles,
> (and many years) with persistence out comes a standard, which people
> then implement (if they find it useful). People quite often implement
> draft standards, but it has to be on the basis that it is the best
thing
> available, and at least better than a blank piece of paper.
[ELP] What you've described sounds quite like what is fashionably called
enterprise data modeling except that your enterprise presumably lacked
authority over its constituents.
How large of a group did the bulk of the real data modeling?
<snip>
> And if such a creation should be allowed to be called a standard is
yet
> another question.
>
> MW: If you have developed a deliverable in an open international
forum,
> where many of the worlds leading experts have had chance to comment on
and
> help develop the standard, and you have operated the standardisation
> process
> diligently, you have earnt the right to call the product a standard.
[ELP] What you are describing is difficult for me to distinguish from a
consortium-based development effort. But every development effort can
have an API. And every interface is a standard for some group big or
small.
[ELP] Here are some more questions:
* Was your group using a relatively long used, well understood data
modeling approach such as OO or relational via ER diagrams or some such?
* Were there were seasoned tools available for the design work and for
the utilization of your standard model.
* Was there an established community of "real" users that stood to
immediately benefit from sharing data.
* Did that community or one of its components explicitly fund your
standards work.
* Were there a number of models already produced and used by your
stakeholders that were already used somewhat for sharing?
* Did your stakeholders have something akin to concrete success criteria
- such as being able to decide whether they could share and receive the
type of data contained in their own internal schemas.
Thanks again,
-Eric
<snip>