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Ontolog Forum

Preparation for Technical Discussion session on "Interoperability Concerns in the Growth of Service Sciences -- Ontological Implications of Service Oriented Architecture" - June 30, 2005

  • Session page: ConferenceCall_2005_06_30
  • Session title:
    • originally (2005.05.19): "Service Sciences"
    • updated (2005.06.20): "Ontological Implications of Service Oriented Architecture"
    • final(2005.06.23): "Interoperability Concerns in the Growth of Service Sciences -- Ontological Implications of SOA"
  • Ideas:
    • ...(please enter below)...
    • the discussion Panel:
      • Moderator / Panelist : BillMcCarthy - REA
      • other candidate Panelists:
        • George Brown (Intel / Arizona State U / IMS) - POSE
        • Duane Nickull (Adobe / UN/CEFACT) - Service Oriented Architecture
        • Michael Grüninger (NIST) - PSL, Ontological Engineering [Steve will confirm with Michael (This is confirmed - Steve)]
        • possibly someone from Berkeley (who is opening up a new Center for Services Sciences) - need to find out who is leading that [Bill will follow-up on this]
        • possibly someone from the "Pattern" community [Bill will follow-up on this]
  • Discussion - BillMcCarthy / Steve Ray / Peter P. Yim - 2005.06.20 11:45~12:26am PDT /2:45~3:26pm EDT
    • both Bill and Steve were at a session on patterns - 3 presenters:
      • GeorgeBrown's presentation:
        • high level - business model, ...
        • VCOR (Value Chain Operations Reference Model)
      • VascoDrecun's presentation:
        • FERA (Federated Enterprise Reference Architecture)
        • this was more into patterns (although not expliciting ontological patterns, but the potential is there)
        • 7 basic components, ... 18 different patterns (into possibly 4 degenrate sets), ...
          • Bill: probably corresponds well the the UN/CEFACT work which Duane might also talk about
      • Goran Zugic (3rd presenter at the workshop)
        • ebSOA for OASIS submission
        • "ebSOA collaboration semantics ... formally defines ...." (Steve: trying to find out if they are using any "formal language")
        • on track to be a standard (Bill: ?)
          • have to be a part of a consortium? -- Bill: that will not be a formula to becoming an "open standard"
          • Steve: told George that this is going to be a barrier to their adoption
          • Bill: also prompted them that they should expose their work to the international pattern community; open review process; ...
    • Steve: suggest that Bill might ask George to invite the other two presenters (GoranZugic, in particular, because he is supposed to be working on the "formal semantics") to come to the call. (Note from Steve - I have since suggested that George consider including Goran Zugic and Vasco Drecun, in an email)
    • Steve, for us:
      • focus on ontology aspects of POSE from George Brown
        • candidate for IMS - international collaborative research
        • is this an "Ontology" project or "Enterprise Integration" project?
    • Title: "Ontological Implications of Service Oriented Architecture" (was "Service Sciences" as originally proposed)
    • next call: Wed 2005.06.22 7:00am PDT / 10:00am EDT - Steve will call Bill & Peter
  • Conference call: Wed 2005.06.22 7:00~7:25am PDT / 10:00~10:25am EDT - Steve will call Bill & Peter
    • Bill: have not heard back from Duane and Brian yet
      • have a couple of other people to contact within the next 2 days
      • want each panelist to run, say, 2 slides, and then go into discussion
    • Steve: communicating with George (he has 15 slides), which Steve has routed to Bill & Peter
      • Steve: suggest slides 12 & 15 to be most appropriate ... Bill will also review and feedback
    • Encourage participants to put up material beforehand
      • Bill will write something up and make a post to the [ontolog forum]
      • Peter will put up the session wiki page by the Ontolog conference call tomorrow
      • we will talk about it at the Ontolog call tomorrow (2005.06.23)
    • The Panelists: BillMcCarthy (moderator), George Brown, Duane Nickull (or UN/CEFACT rep), Michael Grüninger, ... possibly a 'pattern' person too
      • Steve will forward Peter a bio on George too
    • Focus on: SOA, ontology, formal (computability), ... worldwide review / consensus, open standard
Interoperability Concerns in the Growth of Service Sciences -- Ontological Implications of SOA
Traditionally, trading partners -- both within and between firms
trafficked in bundled tangible products like consumer goods or 

partially assembled finished goods. Many early e-commerce standards assumed implicitly product-based exchanges.

Increasingly however, the growth in exchange and bundling of Services in the US and in other economies has supplanted

tangible goods as the raison d'etre of international and domestic commerce. Estimates of the percentage of the gross domestic product of the US due to services (as opposed to goods) range as high as 80%. This trend has led to increased interest in services and the establishment of new research centers like the proposed "Center for Services Sciences" at U.C. Berkeley. A good of overview of such trends is the brief article by Henry Chesbrough:

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/9b743b2a-0e0b-11d9-97d3-00000e2511c8,dwp_uuid=6f0b3526-07e3-11d9-9673-00000e2511c8.html

In e-commerce, this growth in service provision has been mirrored

by the advent of Service-Oriented Architectures which support integration and creation of composite solutions (bundles of services) from loosely-coupled components assembled both within an enterprise (outputs from legacy applications) and outside of the enterprise (typically XML-based Web services).

Whether or not the integrated services originate from

incompatible operations inside the firm or from incompatible vendor interfaces from outside the firms, semantic inconsistencies, redundancies, and discrepancies make the vision of integrated services an ontological problem. The purpose of this panel is to explore the ontological implications of service Sciences in general and of Service-Oriented Architectures in particular. We will start our Ontolog session with some general comments from notable practitioners in the SOA and ontology areas. We will then open up the discussion to more general comments and critiques.