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Ontology Summit 2012: Session-12 - Thu 2012-03-29

Summit Theme: OntologySummit2012: "Ontology for Big Systems"

Session Topic: Organizing the 'Big' Communique

OntologySummit2012_Communique co-Lead Editors & Session co-Chairs:

Panelists:

Archives

Conference Call Details

  • Date: Thursday, 29-Mar-2012
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Abstract

Session Topic: Organizing the 'Big' Communique

This is our 7th Ontology Summit, a joint initiative by NIST, Ontolog, NCOR, NCBO, IAOA & NCO_NITRD with the support of our co-sponsors. The theme adopted for this Ontology Summit is: "Ontology for Big Systems." The event today is our 12th virtual session.

The principal goal of the summit is to bring together and foster collaboration between the ontology community, systems community, and stakeholders of some of "big systems." Together, the summit participants will exchange ideas on how ontological analysis and ontology engineering might make a difference, when applied in these "big systems." We will aim towards producing a series of recommendations describing how ontologies can create an impact; as well as providing illustrations where these techniques have been, or could be, applied in domains such as bioinformatics, electronic health records, intelligence, the smart electrical grid, manufacturing and supply chains, earth and environmental, e-science, cyberphysical systems and e-government.

As is traditional with the Ontology Summit series, the collective results of this extended discourse will be captured in the form of a communiqué, with expanded supporting material provided on the web. Towards that end, our communique lead editors will conduct this session, where we will, as a community, review how we would want to frame the message we would want to deliver in the communique, review the input from each of the tracks, as synthesized from the focused discourse over the last couple of months or so. Our target is to get to an 'almost final' communique draft available for community review/comment between April-4 and April-8, which will then allow us to have a final draft before the OntologySummit2012_Symposium on Thursday 12-April-2012, where the communique will be finally reviewed and adopted.

The goal of the meeting is to come up with an initial draft, albeit possible very coarse, of the summit's communique. Due to the time constraint, discussions will need to be focused and succinct.

More details about this Summit at: OntologySummit2012 (home page for the summit)

Agenda

Ontology Summit 2012 - Panel Session-12

  • Session Format: this is a virtual session conducted over an augmented conference call
  • 0. Opening (co-chairs) - Todd Schneider / Ali Hashemi ... [ slides/material ]
  • 1. Framing the theme
  • 2. Revise / Augment the draft outline
  • 3. Review track contributions - Track Champions
  • 4. Mapping / Melding contributions to outline (All) - -- please refer to process above
  • 5. Status review / Follow-up actions - (co-chairs)
  • 6. Brief review of "Reference List" and other deliverables
  • 7. Announcements / Wrap Up - (co-chairs)

Proceedings

Please refer to the above

IM Chat Transcript captured during the session

see raw transcript here.

(for better clarity, the version below is a re-organized and lightly edited chat-transcript.)

Participants are welcome to make light edits to their own contributions as they see fit.

-- begin in-session chat-transcript --

Peter P. Yim: Welcome to the

Ontology Summit 2012: Session-12 - Thu 2012-03-29

Summit Theme: Ontology Summit 2012: "Ontology for Big Systems"

Session Topic: Organizing the 'Big' Communique

OntologySummit2012_Communique co-Lead Editors & Session co-Chairs: Todd Schneider & Ali Hashemi

Panelists - Track Champions and Co-editors of the Communique:

Session page: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2012_03_29

Mute control: *7 to un-mute ... *6 to mute

Can't find Skype Dial pad? ... it's under the "Call" dropdown menu as "Show Dial pad"

Proceedings:

anonymous morphed into Elizabeth Florescu

anonymous morphed into Ernie Lucier

Todd Schneider: Good afternoon/morning everyone.

Todd Schneider: Will be with you shortly.

anonymous morphed into Tom Tinsley

Mike Bennett: I have to jump off just before 2 Eastern / 11 Pacific.

anonymous morphed into Doug Foxvog

Matthew West: I've had my head down in our own track, so do not have a broad view of this summit.

Mike Bennett: One possible theme is the different applications of ontologies, as a technical artifact

in its own right, and as a means to capture common semantics across some large engineering system. I

don't know if that fits with what you are looking for here though.

Ali Hashemi: Steve Ray points out that many systems: software, enterprises are based around "Model

Driven Systems"

Matthew West: Model driven is closely associated with semantics of course.

Nicola Guarino: Modelling is much more general than ontological modelling

Mike Bennett: @Nicola agreed. And ontology has broader applications than model driven engineering

(indeed, the latter has been a minority case in the Semantic Web world but has been shown to be

important in the big systems context)

Nicola Guarino: @Mike agreed

Terry Longstreth: Lemma: Ontological methods can be applied to engineering models to improve depth

and breadth of modeling semantics

Nicola Guarino: @Terry: I agree very much. Ontological analysis and actual engineered ontologies just

complement (in a very useful way) model driven engineering (for instance model driven engineering

based on systems of differential equations)

Bobbin Teegarden: @Steve Are you implying, perhaps, that the (ontology)Model IS the System (as in

Model Driven Architecture (MDA))?

Steve Ray: @Bobbin: Yes I am.

Henson Graves: agree that we are in a model driven age. Also our modeling language are not as good as

we need. Ontology is the value proposition to make the models work.

Terry Longstreth: @Henson: +1

Steve Ray: I suppose my point is that ontological modeling is a better, more rigorous way of modeling

in general.

Matthew West: Engineering models are more often mathematical than logical, but there are none the

less ontological elements.

Matthew West: @Steve: does that mean you propose replacing mathematics with logic?

Steve Ray: @Matthew: Not really. Logic is just a part of mathematics, right? Where it makes sense,

use logic. Where a differential equation makes sense, by all means use that.

Matthew West: @Steve: Yes, but most people see ontology as being limited to expression in logic, and

not to include broader mathematical models.

Steve Ray: @Matthew: Fair enough. For inherently numerical problems, I would agree that mathematics

as traditionally understood is best (such as a control system for example). But for symbolic

problems, ontology models are best.

Steve Ray: @Matthew: So, both are models, and in fact I would submit that an ontological model

provides the contextual framework in which a mathematical model operates.

Matthew West: @Steve: Agreed.

Jim Kirby: Where are the slides?

Mike Bennett: @Jim on the hopper (vnc server) http://vnc2.cim3.net:5800/

Ernie Lucier: @Jim if you do not have access to hopper (the vnc server) then

http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/OntologySummit2012/OntologySummit2012_Communique/2012-03-29_draft-review/OntologySummit2012_communique-drafting-I--ToddSchneider-AliHashemi_20120329.pdf

Jim Kirby: @Ernie Thanks!

Anatoly Levenchuk: We may at least tell that ontology is about meta-modeling part of modeling. There

are many levels of meta-models and models, therefore we have difficulties in differentiating

ontologizing and modeling (and programming too). Model transformations, compilation and mapping is

about the same activity.

anonymous morphed into Mary Brady

Rex Brooks: While I haven't come to any overarching conclusion, I am now using UML Modeling in

Enterprise Architect and Owl Ontology / Ontologies in Protege, and they are quite useful when

working back and forth from one to the other for specific classes, terms, systems-programs, etc. Of

course having a coordinated set of ontologies and models as the end products is very handy as

resources and references for getting specific kinds of information about these things as needed.

Rex Brooks: I haven't gotten to the point where using these with inferencing engines or open data

sources with SPARQL but I expect that to become even more useful.

Mike Bennett: @Rex have you considered using the Ontology Definition Metamodel (ODM) so as to have

your ontologies and logical UML models in the same tool? Mail me off list if you need to know

details.

Bobbin Teegarden: @Rex Enterprise Architect is just coming out with an OWL Plugin, very formative

stage; and Elisa Kendall's VOM Plugin is more mature (and does follow ODM, ref by Bennett).

Bobbin Teegarden: @Rex VOM Plugin is in MagicDraw, just fyi.

Mike Bennett: @Bobbin agreed. Also lets one generate OWL for use in Protege tools.

Rex Brooks: @Bobbin-Mary-Matthew: Thanks very much. Wish I could afford MagicDraw,

but I'm glad to hear that there is a plugin on the way for EA. However, I will probably continue to

use them as springboards back and forth, creating a kind of synergy I haven't had before.

Rex Brooks: @Mike: I had your email on another machine that failed recently. I would like to contact

you about the ODM. I was aware of it, but not this capability. My email is rexb[at]starbourne.com

Ali Hashemi: Ernie Lucier suggests that the distinction between Current Problems and Uses is unclear.

Ali Hashemi: Nicola Guarino suggests that section headings should convey more meaning.

Ernie Lucier: I have to leave now.

Mary Brady: @Ernie: I can stay for just a bit longer...about 1:15

anonymous morphed into Giancarlo Guizzardi

Ali Hashemi: google-doc of the developing communique draft is at:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OG_iNRROkfh2T76Ri0SrNzwLwVKGKo4kQOWwBKxHjy8/edit

Ali Hashemi: Please note - anyone with this link can edit the document (while we are in-session now)

Peter P. Yim: @Henson, @Matthew - the figures are now in - see:

http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2012_BigSystemsEngineering_Synthesis

Trish Whetzel: Regrets, I need to leave the call now.

Nicola Guarino: Ontological analysis as enabler of good modeling. I endorse this very much. Very

crisp statement.

Nicola Guarino: (who said that?) ... [it was Henson Graves and Matthew West citing that as being among

the track-1&2 key conclusions; the statement was reiterated by session co-chair Todd Schneider just

now.]

Giancarlo Guizzardi: @Nicola: Fully agree.

Steve Ray: +1 on Nicola's statement

Cory Casanave: We should not differentiate modeling and ontological analysis, ontological analysis

should be positioned as part of modeling and one that is emerging as best practice. The precise

modeling encompassing ontological analysis is a key enabler to the model driven approach Steve

identified.

Mary Brady: Regrets...I too have to leave.

Peter P. Yim: I just want to emphasize that some statements (or recommendations) made (say, by panelists

or even in the syntheses) are context sensitive. If we don't have the luxury (say, limited by

document length constraints) in the synthesis write-ups and/or the communique to provide those

context, we should avoid citing them out of context.

Mike Bennett: Cross Track X1 (Ontology Quality), the Google Doc seems to incorporate our community

input page and not our track champions' synthesis page.

Henson Graves: @amanda, there are well developed methods for validating models, e.g., but test.

Presumably these methods could be used to test ontologies. also you could build on Nicola's notion

of ontology correctness

Amanda Vizedom: @henson, yes, and there are even techniques for unit testing, and various researchers

have been developing more quantitative measures of other ontology characteristics that may or may

not be applicable to particular cases... and there are many techniques for in-use testing and domain

expert validation that are not well documented. That's one step; finding more ways to streamline

and/or automate is another.

Doug Foxvog: @Amanda: Could you provide a link to methods/tools for validating ontology quality that

you were referring to? Are you referring to tools such as OntoClean?

Ali Hashemi: @Doug - this probably isn't the same as what Amanda suggests, but this is also relevant:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.3602

Amanda Vizedom: @Doug, I was mostly talking about the need to document approaches to evaluation, so

naturally I cannot provide links. But the reference library has a good start for discovery of some

of what is documented.

Bobbin Teegarden: Something about quality and requirements sometimes missed: if the goal is to tune

the current system, quality/requirements are important; but if the goal is to use modeling to do

possibility' thinking, integrate newness, or get out of the box and design a future system or

enhancement, it's more a creative sketching activity and 'quality' is more of an inhibitor,

requirements are highly conceptual... Is this worth saying?

Amanda Vizedom: @Bobbin- Conceptual requirements are still requirements! But more generally, I'd say

that this is part of the way that requirements vary with usage. And as a reminder, by "quality" here

we are limiting ourselves to the engineering sense: the quality of something is the degree to which

it meets requirements. So, if some characteristic (computational properties, reusability,

consistency with X,....) isn't a requirement of the usage, it shouldn't be part of the quality

measurement for this usage. What we need is better, explicit, and well-grounded understanding of

what requirements go with what usages!

Cory Casanave: don't know why my call dropped!

Henson Graves: [ref. Anatoly's point about "metamodelling = ontologizing"] @anatoly, I agree with you

Mike Bennett: Nicola is making a very important point here: metamodels and ontologies are not in any

way the same thing.

Steve Ray: Agree with Nicola. Metamodelling would refer to M2. Modeling would be M1.

Henson Graves: @steve, an auto is M0, the model is M1, and the metamodel for autos can be at M2

Steve Ray: @Henson: Agreed

Steve Ray: [ref. Anatoly's remark that Nicola's rejection of "metamodels=ontologies" is possibly

related to "presentation versus representation"] Nicola is not talking about presentation versus

representation.

Henson Graves: @nicola, the conceptualizations and patterns can be represented within metamodel. the

model of a system is an instance of the metamodel of a system as a pattern

Matthew West: Ontology is useful at each (meta) level, and in distinguishing between the levels.

Nicola Guarino: At every modeling level there is a corresponding (often implicit) ontology. Ontology

does not just belong to the meta level

Ali Hashemi: +1 to Nicola's point

Steve Ray: @Nicola: Also agreed. I don't think ontology is better suited for one metal level or

another. It is orthogonal to the metal level. It's just a better way to model.

Cory Casanave: @Steve +1 - semantic modeling at all levels!!

Matthew West: @Ali and Todd: [ref. Todd suggesting to do some real time cut-and-paste into the

developing communique draft] Please do not do that. We have provided input that was roughly in the

order of the outline, just take it offline.

Peter P. Yim: +1 on what Matthew West is suggesting - that the lead editors should just make the calls

and come up with a first draft based on what the champions have turned in

Matthew West: It looks like you already have our stuff in there.

Peter P. Yim: +1 on Steve's remark about clarifying "Current State" as being "Current state of the

practice" vs. "state of the art"

Steve Ray: Absolutely agree with what Henson is saying

Peter P. Yim: @Henson - well said - can you document that on the chat, please

Ali Hashemi: [documenting what Henson just said ...] Shift towards explicit semantics ... from

informal modeling to modeling in formal languages ... to underpin modeling languages w/ explicit

semantics ... to understand the underlying ontology of the elements of the languages

Steve Ray: Eh?

Ali Hashemi: ?

Steve Ray: Well defined semantics without knowing what the context is?

Nicola Guarino: ... and there is also a shift from just using *ontologies* (as useful engineering

artefacts) toward using *ontological analysis* (as a methodology which helps understanding and

disentangling the complexity of big systems)

Matthew West: @Nicola: +1

Giancarlo Guizzardi: @HensonGraves: Yes. I agree with that point. Formal characterization should

reflect ontological distinctions. Formal semantics cannot guarantee quality per se. Logics (or any

piece of mathematics for that matter) does not care what we do with it and, thus, cannot itself

fully constrain the possible interpretations of a model (and a metamodel) to the intended ones

Giancarlo Guizzardi: @Nicola: Fully agree with that.

Anatoly Levenchuk: @Nicola not ontological analysis but ontology engineering (like requirement

engineering and systems architecture engineering along with requirement analyses etc. as small part

of engineering thing)

Mike Bennett: Apologies, I have to drop off now.

Peter P. Yim: "inferencing" helps make sense of "big data"

Peter P. Yim: ontological engineering helps augment humans in dealing with "big data" by off-loading a

lot of the work to machines

Matthew West: @Peter: Yes, seeing how ontology can help to automate mundane but necessary activity.

Terry Longstreth: Ontological analysis requires a canonical methodology, which may equate to

ontological engineering, but I think should be broader

Anatoly Levenchuk: @peter better ontology engineering (not ontological). We then have ontology as

explicit engineering artifact with life cycle, practices (like analysis, management etc.).

Nicola Guarino: Thank for you efforts, Todd & Ali!

anonymous morphed into Nikolay Borgest

Ali Hashemi: re. "Reference List" see -

https://www.zotero.org/groups/ontologysummit2012/items/collectionKey/I4QX3RT7

Amanda Vizedom: re. "Reference List" content page on the wiki is at -

http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2012_RecommendedReading

Cory Casanave: How wide or narrow do we consider "inferencing", production of derivative information

from models is done a lot, inference is more identified with FOL

Peter P. Yim: @Cory - not necessarily, even simple inferences (say, applying modus ponens) can prove to

be useful

Cory Casanave: @Peter - I agree but that may not be the interpretation of readers

Peter P. Yim: @Cory - guess we (the lead editors) will just have to word it properly to make sure that

we are looking at a spectrum of possibilities

Cory Casanave: @Peter - good, but not easy!

Giancarlo Guizzardi: Folks. I have to drop off now. thanks for all the effort. bye

Peter P. Yim: Bye, Giancarlo ... thanks for joining us today!

Nicola Guarino: I have to go as well. Bye bye folks, good session!

Peter P. Yim: great session ... lots discussed and done!

Peter P. Yim: Ali says: we will be publishing a draft of the communique the day before our session next

Thursday

Peter P. Yim: -- session ended: 11:23am PDT --

-- end of in-session chat-transcript --

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  • Conference Date and Time: 29-Mar-2012 9:34am~11:23am PDT
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