Ontology Summit 2007: OntologySummit2007_Survey individual responses

OntologySummit2007_Survey/Response input from Matthew West

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: Matthew West

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

[X] 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

[X] Applications Development, Software Engineering and Information Model communities

[ ] System Architecture communities

[ ] Biomedical communities

[X] Standards Development communities

[X] Other (please specify): Enterprise Architecture Communities

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):

[X] 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: Upper Ontology Community

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

[X] 3. expert

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

Question 3a Ontology Value -

"It is central to the constituency. By the way, I think the problem comes in two parts:

1. The tools of the trade (logic and representations)

2. What is represented - the ontology content, so things like 3D and 4D

(I would call this philosophical ontology)"

Question 3b Ontology Issues -

"An understanding of how ontology adds value."

Question 3c Ontology Problems -

"Ignorance and confusion of basic things like class-instance, subtype-supertype, whole-part.

It is distressing how few people can reliably distinguish between these in the wider world

that we need to convince and interact with."

Question 3d Corresponding Solutions -

"How and where does ontology make a difference? I think we aim to high at very big problems

like capturing common sense. I think that maybe we should be looking at some specific small

problems where there is a "bad" solution that following some ontological intervention is

reengineered into a demonstrably "better" solution, and the ontological analysis can be

pointed at as the reason for the improvement."

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

Term: Glossary -

Gloss: A list of terms with agreed natural language definitions arranged in alphabetical order

Reference (citation/url): (Not Answered)

Artifact (name/version): (Not Answered)

- 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?

[X] 1. 1 - totally unlikely

[ ] 2. 2 - rarely

[ ] 3. 3 - sometimes

[ ] 4. 4 - quite often

[ ] 5. 5 - almost always

Question 4a2 Additional Remarks -

"A glossary contains no formal (computer interpretable) relationships between terms,

though they may be implied in the text definitions."

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

Term: Taxonomy

Gloss: A set of terms or concepts that are partially ordered by the subtype/supertype relationship

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

[X] 3. 3 - sometimes

[ ] 4. 4 - quite often

[ ] 5. 5 - almost always

Question 4b2 Additional Remarks -

"A taxonomy has some formal (computer interpretable) relationships between the terms/concepts.

For me this is the minimal level of formal structure that could reasonably be called an ontology."

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

Term: Entity Relationship Model/Data Model

Gloss: A collection of entity types possessing attributes and related by relationships,

including subtype/supertype relationships

Reference (citation/url): (Not Answered)

Artifact (name/version): ISO 15926-2

- Artifact Ref. (url): http://www.tc184-sc4.org/wg3ndocs/wg3n1328/lifecycle_integration_schema.html

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

[X] 3. 3 - sometimes

[ ] 4. 4 - quite often

[ ] 5. 5 - almost always

Question 4c2 Additional Remarks -

"Entity relationship models have roughly the same expressivity as Description Logics.

Entity Relationship models are ontologies, but many practitioners are not aware that

what they are really doing is ontology, and as a result many of them are not very good

ontologies. But a bad ontology is still an ontology. This sort of ontology is easily

the most widespread, and has the biggest impact on business and commerce since SQL databases

run the worlds economy."

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

Term: First Order Logic Ontology

Gloss: A computer interpretable collection of classes, relations, and rules that together provide

a theory of what exists for some domain expressed in a version of First Order Logic.

Reference (citation/url): (Not Answered)

Artifact (name/version): SUMO

- 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

[X] 5. 5 - almost always

Question 4d2 Additional Remarks -

"Well I made this term up to clarify one sort of ontology. Ontologies of this sort

are normally targeting at some sort of reasoning, rather than for instance database design."

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

Term: OWL Ontology

Gloss: A collection of formal classes and relationships using the OWL language that are

theory of what exists for some domain.

Reference (citation/url): (Not Answered)

Artifact (name/version): OWL version of ISO 15926-2

- Artifact Ref. (url): http://www.infowebml.ws/Topics/topics-intro.htm

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

[X] 5. 5 - almost always

Question 4e2 Additional Remarks -

"I don't like OWL much, but there it is. There are lots of questions about how to use OWL

to represent complex ontological (philosophical) problems. There are also questions about

which version of OWL to use."

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: Shell International Petroleum Company Limited

Link (url) to Logo: http://www.shell.com/