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OntologySummit2009 Panel Session - "Standards Community Perspectives Toward Ontology-based Standards" - Thu 19-Mar-2009

Subject: The Standards Perspective -- What are standards and how could ontology help?

  • Session Chair: Mr. HowardMason (ISO TC 184/SC 4; BAE Systems) -- "What do standards need?" - slides
  • Panelists: ...
    • Dr. MatthewWest -- "Ontologising Standards - the low hanging fruit" - slides
    • Mr. DavidLeal -- "Ontologies derived from standard information models used for engineering analysis meta-data" - slides
    • Mr. GeraldRadack -- "Catalogues, Dictionaries, Libraries, Data and Metadata" - slides
    • Mr. NicolasFigay -- "Semantic PLM: using OWL for semantic repositories and mapping using reasoning engines" - slides
    • Mr. DavidShorter - "Seeking greater rigour in textual standards" - slides
    • Mr. DavidPrice - "Future STEP" - slides

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Conference Call Details

  • Date: Thursday, Mar. 19, 2009
  • Start Time: 10:30am PDT / 1:30pm EDT / 6:30pm CET / 17:30 UTC
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Resources

Attendees

Agenda & Proceedings

Agenda

1. Opening by session Chair (HowardMason)

2. Briefings from Panelists -- Matthew West, David Leal, Gerald Radack, Nicolas Figay & David Shorter

3. Q & A and Open Discussion

4. Action Items in preparation for the Ontology Summit

Proceedings

Q & A and Open Discussion

  • ===IM Chat Transcript captured during the session=== ... (lightly edited for clarity)

Peter P. Yim: Welcome to the OntologySummit2009 Panel Session - "Standards Community Perspectives Toward Ontology-based Standards" - Thu 19-Mar-2009

Subject: The Standards Perspective -- What are standards and how could ontology help?

  • Session Chair: Mr. Howard Mason (ISO TC 184/SC 4; BAE Systems) -- "What do standards need?"
  • Panelists:

o Dr. Matthew West -- "Ontologising Standards the low hanging fruit"

o Mr. David Leal -- "Ontologies derived from standard information models used for engineering analysis meta-data"

o Mr. Gerald Radack -- "Catalogues, Dictionaries, Libraries, Data and Metadata"

o Mr. Nicolas Figay -- "Semantic PLM: using OWL for semantic repositories and mapping using reasoning engines"

o Mr. David Shorter - "Seeking greater rigour in textual standards"

o Mr. David Price - "Future STEP"

Refer to details on the session page

at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2009_03_19

anonymous morphed into Nicolas Figay

anonymous morphed into David Leal

Peter P. Yim: Hi you are at the right place ... session starting in 5 minutes

anonymous morphed into Mike Axelrod

anonymous morphed into David Price

anonymous morphed into Matthew West

anonymous morphed into David Shorter

Nicolas Figay: Some reaction:

Nicolas Figay: EXPRESS OWL P21 are not only formats, but also rely on different modeling concepts

and paradigms. Not so easy to make it coherent

Mike Bennett: The first step I would think is to have a common concept of layers of types of model

(as found in computer model driven development) so that logical models

and semantic models are seen as distinct.

David Price: In reply to Nicolas comment, I think it's actually UML, EXPRESS and OWL that need alignment.

Agree that paradigms are different, but not so different that a mapping (perhaps lossy)

is impossible, or at least with a bit of additional information/annotation of the models,

schemas and/or ontologies to support the mapping.

David Leal: URIs for country codes seem an obvious place to start for the very simple stuff - much easier

than units of measure. ISO 3166-1 says Afghanistan is "AF", and the codes are already on the Web.

Assigning a URI such as http://www.iso.org/iso/country#af seems obvious. To complete the task,

the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency needs to assign a URI to the class Country too.

David Price: In reply to David Leal comment, while URIs for country identification is good - engineering apps

require units far more often so while that may be harder, it has far more value.

anonymous morphed into DeborahMacPherson

David Price: By the way, in order to enable better alignment between STEP information models and ontologies,

while we are not changing EXPRESS itself, we are gradually adding capability to the information models

themselves (e.g. "Classification Assignment By External Class" and a new "Same As External Item" I've

just created as part of AP239 E2 work).

Joel Bender: a significant amount of work in units has already been done with/in NIST, it needs to be unified

with the already published concepts and terms of the BIPM.

David Leal: I agree with David Price, but it would set a precedent. I also agree with Joel.

David Price: It would be great if we could push that NIST/BIPM units activities ... any idea how?

David Price: The concerns Nicolas described align very well with the issues/concerns/approach that

we're working with NIST on the Future STEP project.

Steve Ray: Perhaps having this forum conclude that an ontologically-driven alignment between the NIST units work

and BIPM should be on the short list produced at the Summit on April 6-7 would be a good stake in the ground.

Joel Bender: w00t!

Nicolas Figay: What is BIPM?

Joel Bender: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Bureau_of_Weights_and_Measures

David Leal: I have raised this with ISO TC12, responsible for the ISO 80000 series which is replacing ISO 31 and

ISO 1000. They need to be involved too.

David Price: Steve, that would be great.

Mike Bennett: Do people using SC4, SC5 etc. always mean TC184? I work on TC68/SC4 and there must be others

once we reach out to other industries? SC is Sub Committee.

Steve Ray: For those present today, generally TC184 is understood. (Implicit knowledge!)

Joel Bender: If any of the folks working on this are familiar with MathML, that would be a plus. It's a fairly

straight forward process to translate MathML terms into rdf/rdfs/owl constructs,

and that's the one spot where the NIST work stops and need to keep going.

Nicolas Figay: I would recommand not to make evolve EXPRESS too fast, and not to be align with other language

which have not the same focus. If not, it will become a monster, and we will have difficulties

to choose one language or the other for a given purpose. If EXPRESS expressivity is the same than OWL,

it is a kind of competition. If different, it is a cooperation. The exemple is the way RDL are used in PLCS,

that is a little bit difficult for non expert

David Price: There is no plan to change EXPRESS.

Nicolas Figay: Ouf

Mike Bennett: @ Steve, thanks, I see that's Automation systems and integration so I presume that there are opportunities

for standardisation using ontologies in other inustries e.g. TC68 financial services where we are

doing things in this area. So I did not have the explicit knowledge that you mention

David Price: ISO 19440 that David Shorter is describing looks very much like MODAF/DODAF.

Steve Ray: Mike, There are indeed opportunities. I will follow up on your email to me suggesting the financial industry.

Also, what are your thoughts on XBRL?

David Price: I should have said, a very small subset of MODAF/DODAF.

Nicolas Figay: To respond to Mike, we are also involved in System Engineering, Enterprise modeling, project management,

Business Intelligence and trying to make links ... through ontologies and components agregation

Mike Bennett: @ Steve - XBRL very important. I am waiting on the OWL version so I can use it more formally

in creating the financial securities ontology. I've referred to it as much as I can, and I think

everyone involved in SC4 (gotcha!) and elsewhere acknowledges its importance in this area.

Mike Bennett: @ Nicolas, thanks, I wasn't aware of that. Are you also aware of UN/CEFACT CCTS and so on?

Nicolas Figay: To replace Protg, you can use a UML modeler, with ODM profile but compliant with XMI!

Mike Bennett: David, great point about UML and publishing something viewable. I've been using an ODM based format

(I see Nicolas beat me to it)

Mike Bennett: But with different coloured archetypes etc.

Nicolas Figay: Don't forget configuration managment of language format

David Price: My cell phone won't push the #3 to you, so I cannot talk at the moment.

David Price: I am doing #3, but you still cannot hear me.

Joel Bender: *3

Steve Ray: Mike, is XBRL - OWL version being worked on already?

Mike Bennett: So I heard, but I haven't heard anything about this recently.

Nicolas Figay: I don't like the idea of migration. May be due to Long Term archiving concern...

Nicolas Figay: For ABOX and TBOX, it is not only express but also p21

Nicolas Figay: For these mapping, the configuration management is to be carefully handled for different languages,

conformance and openess of used tools (e.g. use only tools providing correct and interchangeable XMI

with appropriate version). Horizon and rythm of evolution should be compatible and align

- some synchronisation of the communities is required

Nicolas Figay: A tool can be the set of framework being produced by IAI, ASD SSG, ISO ... for governance of standards

... which should include those related to ontology

Nicolas Figay: still, it is a pity not to have semantic services for SOA.

Nicolas Figay: Business Process are not to be forgotten

Joel Bender: Will SKOS be a unifying force?

David Price: I have to leave to present the Future STEP project o PDES inc. Sorry!

Michael Grüninger: What are some of the terms that would be included in an ontology of product structure?

Nicolas Figay: From my point, it will be extension of modeling constructs that should be added

Joel Bender: I found this <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology-medieval/> which is a great resource

for understanding why discussions of "is a part of" are hard to manage

(and why OWL classification fails sometimes) particularly for me with non-english speakers.

Mike Axelrod: I've managed to unmute'

Steve Ray: I have begun to list the ideas of candidate standards on the conference page for next week's panel,

under "Agenda Ideas", see http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2009_03_26#nid1UG4

Michael Grüninger: There are already several first-order ontologies for mereology (axioms for part-of) and mereotopology

(axioms for part-of and connection). What are other relations that need to be axiomatized for

product structure within the current standards?

Nicolas Figay: if automatic transformation language to language is not very usefull (impedance mismatch),

we should find a way to capture the way it was translated in order to be able to go back

- current technology manage it (with annotations

Joel Bender: @ Michael Grüninger: where can I find these?

Nicolas Figay: owl, uml, java ...

Nicolas Figay: you are welcome

Michael Grüninger: I will provide a complete bibliography on the wiki. We also plan to have an initial version of

Joel Bender: excellent...thank you...

Nicolas Figay: Thanks Howard

Steve Ray: Great session! Thanks to all.

Peter P. Yim: great session ... the audio recording and chat transcript will be up on the session page later (as usual)

Mike Bennett: Some great ideas in there. I thought there was a lot of valuable detail in what Nicolas is doing for example.

Peter P. Yim: bye everyone ... thanks you for the participation!

Peter P. Yim: posting comments received (on email) from Jerry Smith (DISA) below ...

GeraldSmith: Amplification Gerry Radack comments on opportunities for quickly transforming and elevating a specification:

SC4 "Harvesting" is a fast, low administrative drag process for progressing a candidate specification

to international recognition and accreditation.

Source of the specification is immaterial as long as quality, IPR and management issues are resolved.

See http://www.tc184-sc4.org - go to the "Harvesting" link.

GeraldSmith: Regarding DavidShorter's question on his last slide about "... how the result should be published as a standard?",

I would suggest all to look at the "Harvesting" process of ISO TC184-SC4. ... See: http://www.tc184-sc4.org

Peter P. Yim: I look forward to all of you to send me (via email to <peter.yim@cim3.com>) your support

by confirming that we can list your standards working group and/or your organization

as a "co-sponsor" for this Summit

- ref.: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2009#nid1Q4P

  • Further Question & Remarks - please post them to the [ ontolog-summit ] listserv

Audio Recording of this Session

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  • Conference Date and Time: 19-Mar-2009 10:35am~12:40pm PDT
  • Duration of Recording: 1 Hour 58 Minutes
  • Recording File Size: 13.5 MB (in mp3 format)
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