Ontology Summit 2007: OntologySummit2007_Survey individual responses

OntologySummit2007_Survey/Response input from John F. Sowa

Please make sure you refer to the Ontology Summit 2007 & OntologySummit2007_Survey pages for the full context of the input.   

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Question 1 Respondant Info

Name: John Sowa

Question 2 Affiliated - I am affiliated with the following constituencies/communities (please check all that apply)

[ ] Formal ontology communities

[ ] Semantic Web communities

[ ] Linguistic communities

[ ] Concept Map community

[ ] Topic Map community

[ ] SEARCH communities

[ ] Web 2.0 communities

[ ] Thesauri community

[ ] Taxonomy communities

[ ] Metadata communities

[ ] XML communities

[ ] Applications Development, Software Engineering and Information Model communities

[ ] System Architecture communities

[ ] Biomedical communities

[ ] Standards Development communities

[ ] Other (please specify): (Not Answered)

Question 2a Representing - I represent the perspective of the following constituency/community (please pick one; if you want to provide input from more than one perspective, please return a separate form):

[ ] 1. Formal ontology communities

[ ] 2. Semantic Web communities

[ ] 3. Linguistic communities

[ ] 4. Concept Map community

[ ] 5. Topic Map community

[ ] 6. SEARCH communities

[ ] 7. Web 2.0 communities

[ ] 8. Thesauri community

[ ] 9. Taxonomy communities

[ ] 10. Metadata communities

[ ] 11. XML communities

[ ] 12. Applications Development, Software Engineering and Information Model communities

[ ] 13. System Architecture communities

[ ] 14. Biomedical communities

[ ] 15. Standards Development communities

[ ] 16. Other (please specify): (Not Answered)

Question 2b Specific Community

or sub-community I am affiliated with: (Not Answered)

Question 2c Expertise Self Assessment - With respect to the perspective you are representing and providing input from, I am a/an:

[ ] 1. informed layman

[ ] 2. practitioner

[ ] 3. expert

[ ] 4. other (please specify): (Not Answered)

Question 3a Ontology Value -

"(Not Answered)"

Question 3b Ontology Issues -

"Following is a slightly edited note that I sent to some colleagues,

and it includes some discussions about issues that I believe are

very important. I hope that it may answer some of the questions,

but not in exactly the same categories as the questionnaire. And by

the way, the central language in the diagram is Common Logic, but

we are actually implementing the IKL extensions to CL, since we

require the metalanguage capability of IKL.

--John Sowa via e-mail / 28 Mar 2007 13:52:56 -0500 (EST)"

Question 3c Ontology Problems -

"(Not Answered)"

Question 3d Corresponding Solutions -

"(Not Answered)"

Question 4aGlossary - Ontology-related 'vocabulary' and representative 'artifact' from your constituency or community:

Term: CL

Gloss: Common Logic

Reference (citation/url): http://cl.tamu.edu/

Artifact (name/version): IKL

- Artifact Ref. (url): (Not Answered)

Question 4a1 Called An Ontology - On a scale of 1 to 5, (where 1 means totally unlikely and 5 means almost always), would the above term or artifact be referred to as an "ontology" in your community?

[ ] 1. 1 - totally unlikely

[ ] 2. 2 - rarely

[ ] 3. 3 - sometimes

[ ] 4. 4 - quite often

[ ] 5. 5 - almost always

Question 4a2 Additional Remarks -

"[Shown below (hyperlink)] is a .gif file, which may be useful

to clarify the relationships among the various languages we

have been discussing:

1. At the top are the human interfaces: controlled

natural languages in green and graphics in yellow.

CLCE is our version of Controlled English, but we

would encourage other people to develop other versions

of controlled NLs and other versions of graphical

interfaces.

2. In the middle is Common Logic, which is the ISO standard.

That is the hard interface to and from which all other

languages are translated. Three dialects of Common Logic

have been standardized by ISO, and they are shown in blue:

CGIF (Conceptual Graph Interchange Format), CLIF (Common

Logic Interchange Format), and XCL (an XML notation for

Common Logic).

3. At the bottom are logic-based languages used as machine

interfaces. This is an open-ended list, but I included

several as illustrations: SQL for relational databases,

OCL for the UML Object Constraint Language, Prolog, Datalog,

and the Semantic Web languages RDF(S), OWL, and RuleML.

At present, we have implemented the translators to support three

languages and the mappings between them: CLCE, CGIF, and Prolog.

We intend to implement others as we get the time and funding to do

so, but these three are the ones we are primarily using right now.

> The most interesting aspect of your diagram is what it tells us

> (and what it COULD tell us) about human cognition. What is it

> that makes the human interfaces more readable and comprehensible

> to humans than the machine interfaces?

That is a good question, which involves many issues of linguistics,

psychology, and human factors. We still do not have sufficient

guidelines for determining what really makes languages and graphics

readable and intelligible.

For some aspects, such as the type hierarchy, graphics have been

used as a supplement to logic since the Tree of Porphyry in the

3rd century AD. But it's not clear how to increase the expressive

power of the graphics without substantially reducing readability.

The UML approach of having a half-dozen different kinds of diagrams

is also interesting. Each one expresses a different view of aspects

of the logic and ontology. It would be interesting to explore

systematic ways of highlighting, zooming, and focusing on various

aspects.

> The distinction is all the more striking because the human

> interfaces are "controlled" interfaces, capable of being

> unambiguously mapped to strict common logic. So they lack some

> of the richness, the ambiguity, the color, and the metaphor

> of unrestricted natural languages. Nevertheless, they are

> undeniably easier to read, expressed in more "human" terms,

> than the machine interface languages. I imagine the reasons

> for this difference have already been the subject of some

> serious study in the literature, but I suspect that there is

> room for considerably more.

Unfortunately, the people who address human factors and those

who focus on the expressive power of the logic are almost

completely disjoint. Furthermore, the journals and funding

agencies are partitioned in ways that have the effect of

keeping the skills disjoint.

> Parenthetically, I would SUSPECT that the distinction between

> human interface languages and machine language interfaces

> bears at least SOME relationship to the distinction between

> good technical writing in natural language and bad technical

> writing in natural language.

I certainly agree. In fact, my view of the combination of

CLCE with graphics is to approach the style of a well-written,

freshman-level textbook in math or science. CLCE would express

the precise definitions and axioms, the graphics tools would

present the illustrations, and the comments would provide

some of the background and motivation. At present, we are

not processing the comments, but we might consider using the

analogy engine to process the comments for help facilities

and explanations.

But there are many issues to be explored -- in human factors,

computability, and logical expressivity.

"

Question 4bGlossary - Ontology-related 'vocabulary' and representative 'artifact' from your constituency or community:

Term: (Not Answered)

Gloss: (Not Answered)

Reference (citation/url): (Not Answered)

Artifact (name/version): (Not Answered)

- Artifact Ref. (url): (Not Answered)

Question 4b1 Called An Ontology - On a scale of 1 to 5, (where 1 means totally unlikely and 5 means almost always), would the above term or artifact be referred to as an "ontology" in your community?

[ ] 1. 1 - totally unlikely

[ ] 2. 2 - rarely

[ ] 3. 3 - sometimes

[ ] 4. 4 - quite often

[ ] 5. 5 - almost always

Question 4b2 Additional Remarks -

"(Not Answered)"

Question 4cGlossary - Ontology-related 'vocabulary' and representative 'artifact' from your constituency or community:

Term: (Not Answered)

Gloss: (Not Answered)

Reference (citation/url): (Not Answered)

Artifact (name/version): (Not Answered)

- Artifact Ref. (url): (Not Answered)

Question 4c1 Called An Ontology - On a scale of 1 to 5, (where 1 means totally unlikely and 5 means almost always), would the above term or artifact be referred to as an "ontology" in your community?

[ ] 1. 1 - totally unlikely

[ ] 2. 2 - rarely

[ ] 3. 3 - sometimes

[ ] 4. 4 - quite often

[ ] 5. 5 - almost always

Question 4c2 Additional Remarks -

"(Not Answered)"

Question 4dGlossary - Ontology-related 'vocabulary' and representative 'artifact' from your constituency or community:

Term: (Not Answered)

Gloss: (Not Answered)

Reference (citation/url): (Not Answered)

Artifact (name/version): (Not Answered)

- Artifact Ref. (url): (Not Answered)

Question 4d1 Called An Ontology - On a scale of 1 to 5, (where 1 means totally unlikely and 5 means almost always), would the above term or artifact be referred to as an "ontology" in your community?

[ ] 1. 1 - totally unlikely

[ ] 2. 2 - rarely

[ ] 3. 3 - sometimes

[ ] 4. 4 - quite often

[ ] 5. 5 - almost always

Question 4d2 Additional Remarks -

"(Not Answered)"

Question 4eGlossary - Ontology-related 'vocabulary' and representative 'artifact' from your constituency or community:

Term: (Not Answered)

Gloss: (Not Answered)

Reference (citation/url): (Not Answered)

Artifact (name/version): (Not Answered)

- Artifact Ref. (url): (Not Answered)

Question 4e1 Called An Ontology - On a scale of 1 to 5, (where 1 means totally unlikely and 5 means almost always), would the above term or artifact be referred to as an "ontology" in your community?

[ ] 1. 1 - totally unlikely

[ ] 2. 2 - rarely

[ ] 3. 3 - sometimes

[ ] 4. 4 - quite often

[ ] 5. 5 - almost always

Question 4e2 Additional Remarks -

"(Not Answered)"

Question 4fGlossary - Ontology-related 'vocabulary' and representative 'artifact' from your constituency or community:

Term: (Not Answered)

Gloss: (Not Answered)

Reference (citation/url): (Not Answered)

Artifact (name/version): (Not Answered)

- Artifact Ref. (url): (Not Answered)

Question 4f1 Called An Ontology - On a scale of 1 to 5, (where 1 means totally unlikely and 5 means almost always), would the above term or artifact be referred to as an "ontology" in your community?

[ ] 1. 1 - totally unlikely

[ ] 2. 2 - rarely

[ ] 3. 3 - sometimes

[ ] 4. 4 - quite often

[ ] 5. 5 - almost always

Question 4f2 Additional Remarks -

"(Not Answered)"

Question 4gGlossary - Ontology-related 'vocabulary' and representative 'artifact' from your constituency or community:

Term: (Not Answered)

Gloss (definition): (Not Answered)

Reference (citation/url): (Not Answered)

Artifact (name/version): (Not Answered)

- Artifact Ref. (url): (Not Answered)

Question 4g1 Called An Ontology - On a scale of 1 to 5, (where 1 means totally unlikely and 5 means almost always), would the above term or artifact be referred to as an "ontology" in your community?

[ ] 1. 1 - totally unlikely

[ ] 2. 2 - rarely

[ ] 3. 3 - sometimes

[ ] 4. 4 - quite often

[ ] 5. 5 - almost always

Question 4g2 Additional Remarks -

"(Not Answered)"

Question 4hGlossary - Ontology-related 'vocabulary' and representative 'artifact' from your constituency or community:

Term: (Not Answered)

Gloss: (Not Answered)

Reference (citation/url): (Not Answered)

Artifact (name/version): (Not Answered)

- Artifact Ref. (url): (Not Answered)

Question 4h1 Called An Ontology - On a scale of 1 to 5, (where 1 means totally unlikely and 5 means almost always), would the above term or artifact be referred to as an "ontology" in your community?

[ ] 1. 1 - totally unlikely

[ ] 2. 2 - rarely

[ ] 3. 3 - sometimes

[ ] 4. 4 - quite often

[ ] 5. 5 - almost always

Question 4h2 Additional Remarks -

"(Not Answered)"

Question 5 Confirm Participation - where,

a 'convener' is a participant who provides substantive contribution to the Ontology Summit 2007

initiative (through the online discourse, this survey, and other events leading to or during

the workshops and the written communique process), and

a 'co-sponsor' is an organization who is providing technical or funding support (e.g. supporting

member(s) of its technical staff to participate as a 'convener'), and/or endorsing the objective

of this Ontology Summit 2007,

[ ] I agree that my name can be listed as a 'convener' of Ontology Summit 2007

[ ] I will consider endorsing the Ontology Summit 2007 communique. Please send it to me for

review when it is ready. I will confirm my endorsement after the review.

[ ] I confirm that you may list my organization as a 'co-sponsor' for

Ontology Summit 2007 (details below).

Question 5a Co-Sponsor confirmation:

Organization Name: (Not Answered)

Link (url) to Logo: (Not Answered)

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