RE: One more Upper Ontology
Dear John,
I dipped into a couple of their schemas. It looks very much as if when they talk
about "management" and "management information" they are really only talking
about the management of information systems.
Matthew West
Streamline Business Information Architect for Supply Chain Management
Shell Information Technology International Limited
Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 20 7934 4490 Mobile: +44 7796 336538
Email: matthew.west@shell.com
Internet: http://www.shell.com
http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John F. Sowa [mailto:sowa@bestweb.net]
> Sent: 10 June 2004 16:39
> To: Leonid Ototsky
> Cc: standard-upper-ontology@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
> Subject: Re: One more Upper Ontology
>
>
> Leonid,
>
> Thank you for bringing the Common Information Model (CIM)
> to our attention. That is one more example of the way
> that ontologies proliferate. And CIM has the backing
> of much more powerful groups (i.e., with more money)
> than any ontology that is being considered by the SUO.
> Following is the list of board members (in alphabetical
> order):
>
> Cisco, Dell, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel,
> Microsoft, NEC, Novell, Oracle, Sun Microsystems,
> Symantec, VERITAS Software, WBEM Solutions.
>
> Besides board members, they have a much longer list of
> leadership members, participation members, monitoring
> members, alliance partner members, and academic alliance
> members.
>
> There is no way that the SUO can compete with them in
> terms of funding. However, it might be possible for the
> SUO to influence them by becoming a partner with them.
> Even though the SUO doesn't have any money, it is acredited
> by the IEEE to develop standards. That accreditation alone
> is very significant -- and it might be sufficient to get
> some leverage with the CIM group and its board members.
>
> Note that a CIM schema is NOT expressed in any version
> of logic that we have been discussing, such as predicate
> calculus, KIF, CGs, OWL, etc. Instead, it is expressed in
> a Managed Object File (MOF) and displayed in UML diagrams.
>
> But both MOF and UML are candidates for being translated
> to and from the Common Logic framework, which is being
> developed as the common semantic base for all of the above
> versions of logic. The task of mapping MOF and UML to
> Common Logic would enable any ontology developed by the
> SUO to be converted to a CIM schema and vice-versa.
>
> The task of specifying that mapping would require some
> effort, which would require some people to do some work,
> for which funding would certainly be desirable. Perhaps
> an alliance with the CIM group could help with the funding
> -- either by getting support for current SUO members or
> by getting employees of the board members to join the SUO
> and contribute to the joint effort.
>
> Following are some excerpts from their FAQ file.
>
> John Sowa
> ____________________________________________________________
>
> Source: http://www.dmtf.org/about/faq/cim
>
> WHAT IS CIM?
>
> CIM stands for Common Information Model. It is a conceptual
> information
> model for describing management that is not bound to a particular
> implementation. This allows for the interchange of management
> information between management systems and applications. This can be
> either "agent to manager" or "manager to manager" communications that
> provides for Distributed System Management. There are two
> parts to CIM:
> The CIM Specification and the CIM Schema.
>
> The CIM Specification describes the language, naming, Meta Schema and
> mapping techniques to other management models such as SNMP MIBs, and
> DMTF MIFs etc. The Meta Schema is a formal definition of the model. It
> defines the terms used to express the model and their usage and
> semantics. The elements of the Meta Schema are Classes,
> Properties, and
> Methods. The Meta Schema also supports Indications and Associations as
> types of Classes and References as types of Properties.
>
> The CIM Schema provides the actual model descriptions. The CIM Schema
> supplies a set of classes with properties and associations
> that provide
> a well-understood conceptual framework within which it is possible to
> organize the available information about the managed environment.
>
> The CIM Schema itself is structured into three distinct layers:
>
> 1. The Core Schema is an information model that captures notions
> that are applicable to all areas of management.
>
> 2. Common Schemas are information models that capture notions that
> are common to particular management areas, but independent of a
> particular technology or implementation. The common areas are systems,
> devices, networks, applications, metrics, databases, the physical
> environment, event definition and handling, management of a CIM
> infrastructure (the Interoperability Model), users and
> security, policy
> and trouble ticketing/ knowledge exchange (the Support Model). These
> models define classes addressing each of the management areas in a
> vendor-neutral manner.
>
> 3. Extension Schemas represent organizational or vendor-specific
> extensions of the Common Schema. These schemas can be specific to
> environments, such as operating systems (for example, UNIX?
> or Microsoft
> Windows?). Extension Schema fall into two categories,
> Technology-Specific areas such UNIX98 or Product-Specific
> areas that are
> unique to a particular product such as Windows.
>
> The formal definition of the CIM Schema is expressed in a
> Managed Object
> File (MOF) which is an ASCII or UNICODE file that can be used as input
> into an MOF editor, parser or compiler for use in an application.
>
> The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is used to visually portray the
> structure of the CIM Schema.
>