Semantics, Ontologies
& UBL
- A presentation to the UBL TC members -
| by | |
| Leo Obrst, Jack Park, Peter Yim | |
| April 2, 2002 |
| Purpose of this presentation | |
| XML and Web Interoperability | |
| Vision of the Semantic Web | |
| Ontology & Ontologies | |
| The ebXML-CC & UBL approach | |
| UBL & Ontologies – commonalities & differences | |
| What can we learn from Ontologists when constructing UBL | |
| Some Frontiers of the Semantic Web pioneers | |
| What will help facilitate smooth migration and optimize re-use | |
| What’s Next? | |
| References | |
| To start a dialog between UBL TC members with colleagues working on Knowledge Representation, Ontologies and certain aspects of the future “Semantic Web” | |
| Allow both to take a closer look at what the other party is doing | |
| To confirm a gut feel that UBL is essentially building a “business ontology” (even if we don’t call it by that name) | |
| Explore “if” and “how” we can continue this dialog so that it can be beneficial to both parties’ work |
As for the Way (“Tao”), the Way that can be spoken of is not the constant Way;
| "The great thing about XML is that
it enables the incredible experimentation we see in the marketplace.
But there are hundreds of XML groups creating Internet commerce 'languages'.
This, coupled with the various transaction standards in common use, presents
formidable obstacles to organizations wishing to build or participate in
global trading webs." Howard Smith, Director, Ontology.org, & Director of Strategy, E-Business, CSC Europe, 2000 |
| “The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.” [SA2001] | |
| “The Semantic Web will bring structure to the meaningful content of Web pages, creating an environment where software agents roaming from page to page can readily carry out sophisticated tasks for users.” [SA2001] | |
| “The Semantic Web is a vision: the idea of having data on the web defined and linked in a way, that it can be used by machines - not just for display purposes, but for using it in various applications.” [SW] | |
Towards Semantic Interoperability
| “Interoperable computing solutions
imply the existence of a sharable ontology, or common set of object
semantics. Implementers will still be able to use localized and otherwise
customized XML markup languages if they choose, but it should be possible to express
and validate the semantics of the design as well as the raw XML
syntax.” Robin Cover, “XML & Semantic Transparency”, http://www.oasisopen.org/cover/xmlAndSemantics.html |
| An ontology defines the terms used to describe and represent an area of knowledge. | |
| Ontologies are used by people, databases, and applications that need to share domain information (a domain is just a specific subject area or area of knowledge, like medicine, tool manufacturing, real estate, automobile repair, financial management, etc.). | |
| Ontologies include computer-usable definitions of basic concepts in the domain and the relationships among them … They encode knowledge in a domain and also knowledge that spans domains. In this way, they make that knowledge reusable. | |
| The word ontology has been used to describe artifacts with different degrees of structure. These range from simple taxonomies (such as the Yahoo hierarchy), to metadata schemes (such as the Dublin Core), to logical theories. The Semantic Web needs ontologies with a significant degree of structure. |
| Ontologies are usually expressed in a logic-based language, so that detailed, accurate, consistent, sound, and meaningful distinctions can be made among the classes, properties, and relations. | |
| Ontologies figure prominently in the emerging Semantic Web as a way of representing the semantics of documents and enabling the semantics to be used by web applications and intelligent agents. | |
| Ontologies can prove very useful for a community as a way of structuring and defining the meaning of the metadata terms that are currently being collected and standardized. | |
| Using ontologies, tomorrow's applications can be "intelligent", in the sense that they can more accurately work at the human conceptual level. |
| Ontology is the standardization of meanings (i.e., terms and concepts of a language) | ||
| An Ontology models the meaning (“semantics”) of a Domain(s) | ||
| Ontology thus includes: | ||
| Objects (things) in the many domains of interest | ||
| The relationships between those things | ||
| The properties (and property values) of those things | ||
| The functions and processes involving those things | ||
| Constraints on and rules about those things | ||
Big O: Ontology; Little O: ontology
| Philosophy: “a particular system of categories accounting for a certain vision of the world” or domain of discourse, a conceptualization (Big O) | |
| Artificial Intelligence: “an engineering product consisting of a specific vocabulary used to describe a part of reality, plus a set of explicit assumptions regarding the intended meaning of the vocabulary words”, “a specification of a conceptualization” (Little O) | |
| Ontological Engineering: towards a formal, logical theory, usually ‘concepts’ (i.e., the entities, usually classes hierarchically structured in a special subsumption relation), ‘relations’, ‘properties’, ‘values’, ‘constraints’, ‘rules’, ‘instances’ |
| Conscious choice of defining the ebXML Core Components (CCs) and the UBL Business Information Entities (BIEs) at the semantic level | |
| UBL defined naming and design rules | |
| employment of a “context” methodology | |
| User (industrial specific) extensibility | |
| Externally maintained repository of BIEs and Documents | |
| All code lists are external (both for creation and maintenance) which UBL will just point to | |
UBL & Ontologies – shared purpose
| Both are trying to develop shared International Standards | |
| Both are attempts to logically model our real world | |
| UBL is addressing a key ontology domain – that of “business” | |
| Both are trying to enable semantic interoperability |
| BIE (Entity); type; object class; property (qualifier); representation; occurrence/cardinality; instances; context driver | ||
| Confined to a “single” or “restricted set” of relationships & rules | ||
| CC tripartite Naming Rule: | ||
| Object Class; | ||
| Property Term (w/ Qualifier); | ||
| Representation Term | ||
| Single inheritance only | ||
| Entity; relationships; properties; instances; cardinality; functions/processes; constraints/rules; context | ||
| Almost any relationship and rules can
be modeled |
||
| RDF tripartite Data Model: | ||
| Subject | ||
| Predicate | ||
| Object | ||
| Multiple inheritance is possible | ||
When Ontology Meets
Business
- Information & Transaction Needs
What can we learn from Ontologists when constructing UBL? [1]
| Logical rigor, generality, reuse, modularity, refinement | ||
| Useful for domain ontologies (UBL) to inherit middle, upper ontologies | ||
| Don’t reinvent wheel 10 million times | ||
| Ontology engineering: formal conceptual modeling & ontological analysis using principled semantic guidelines | ||
| Ontology: shared vocabulary & meaning (& structure) | ||
What can we learn from Ontologists when constructing UBL? [2]
| Theory of formal distinctions & connections about entities, relations, categories | ||
| Properties: identity, rigidity, unity; what changes, what remains same? | ||
| Part-whole relations: mereotopology, aggregation, mass/count (plurality) | ||
| Levels: physical, functional, biological, intentional, social | ||
| Taxonomic constraints | ||
| Property analysis: legal agent, group, social entity, organization | ||
Some Frontiers of the Semantic Web
| XTM | |||
| Provides rich semantic layer above information resources [TM] | |||
| Evolving Standards: ISO 13250 and XTM [TO] | |||
| OASIS XTM TC’s | |||
| Topic Maps Vocabulary for XML Standards and Technologies | |||
| Topic Maps Published Subjects | |||
| Topic Maps Published Subjects for Geography and Languages (GeoLang) | |||
| WOW-G / OWL [WOW-G] | |||
| Building on DAML+OIL, using RDF/S & XML | |||
| IEEE Standard Upper Ontology: SUMO, IFF, OpenCyc? | |||
| European Union’s OntoWeb consortium [OntoWeb] | |||
| Content Standards, Ontology Language Standards, Ontology Environment, Industrial Applications, Language Technology SIGs | |||
| UBL is “now” (should have been yesterday) – addressing a real need so that business can effectively be served | |
| The Semantic Web is somewhere in the “future” – representing how the Internet could have served humanity better | |
| However, if done right, UBL can help provide a bridge for us to transition from “here” (the Web as we know it now) to “there” -- the Web where we can have true semantic interoperability |
What will help facilitate smooth migration and optimize re-use
| Continue this current dialog -- between UBL designers and Semantic Web (especially WOL) designers | |
| Begin to develop Reference Implementations with each other in mind | |
| Recruit ontologists into the UBL team | |
| … suggestions please … | |
| Schedule another session for Q&A ? | |
| Invite Leo and/or Jack to our next UBL face-to-face meeting? | |
| Establish liaison relationship between UBL and WOW-G? | |
| Make UBL a use case for the W3C-WebOnt work? | |
| Assess within the UBL TC how our work can better align with that of other web ontology work groups | |
| … other suggestions please … |
| For the Business, Management or Strategist -- | ||
| "The Next Web" -- Business
Week, Mar. 4, 2002 issue [BW subscribers only] at http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_09/b3772108.htm or [temporary] http://ubl.cim3.org/~lcsc/tempMeetingResources/for_2002-04-02_a/temp/TimBernersLees_Next_Web--BW_020304.html |
||
| "The Semantic Web" --
Scientific American, May 2001 issue - [SA2001] at http://www.sciam.com/2001/0501issue/0501berners-lee.html |
||
| “The Semantic Web: A Primer” – Edd
Dumbill, Nov. 2000 at http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2000/11/01/semanticweb/index.html |
||
| For the Developers or Technologist -- | ||
| "The Semantic Web: An
Introduction" at http://infomesh.net/2001/swintro/ |
||
| "Requirements for a Web Ontology
Language" - W3C Working Draft 07 Mar02 at http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-webont-req-20020307/ |
||
| XML, RDF, DAML+OIL Language Comparisons -- | ||
| DAML: http://www.daml.org/language/features.html | ||
| see Yolanda's Gil's comparison at http://trellis.semanticweb.org/expect/web/semanticweb/comparison.html | ||
| More Semantic Web & Web Ontology Resources -- | ||
| [SW] The Semantic Web Portal: http://www.semanticweb.org | ||
| [TM] XML Topic Maps, Jack Park, Editor, Addison-Wesley, July 2002 | ||
| [TO] http://www.topicmaps.org | ||
| [WOW-G] http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/WebOnt/ | ||
| [IEEE-SUO] (http://suo.ieee.org/ | ||
| [OntoWeb] http://www.ontoweb.org/index.htm). | ||
| “On Standardization of the Web Ontology Language” at http://www.cim3.net/research/semanticweb/Standardization_of_WebOntologyLanguage_IEEEintelligentSystem_Mar-2002.html | ||
| Questions ? | |
| Comments … | |
| Suggestions … |