9 August 2006Ken Laskey1 Ontologies and SOA or Isn’t Discovery a Wonderful Thing? Ken Laskey co-editor SOA Reference Model

9 August 2006Ken Laskey2 Talk about SOA and you invariably talk about discovering things

9 August 2006Ken Laskey3 For example, Talk about SOA and you invariably talk about discovering things

9 August 2006Ken Laskey4 But... How did I know what properties were used to describe the thing I was searching for? How did I know what typical values were applied to the properties?

9 August 2006Ken Laskey5 According to SOA-RM, structure isn’t enough Within a street address structure, the city name and the street name are typically given the same data type – some variant of the string type. However, city names and street names are not really the same type of thing at all. Distinguishing the correct interpretation of a city name string and a street name string is not possible using type-based techniques – it requires additional information that cannot be expressed purely in terms of the structure of data.

9 August 2006Ken Laskey6 According to SOA-RM, structure isn’t enough Within a street address structure, the city name and the street name are typically given the same data type – some variant of the string type. However, city names and street names are not really the same type of thing at all. Distinguishing the correct interpretation of a city name string and a street name string is not possible using type-based techniques – it requires additional information that cannot be expressed purely in terms of the structure of data. The semantics of the property must be clear - is it street or city I am providing / you are searching on?

9 August 2006Ken Laskey7 Again from SOA-RM, There is often a huge potential for variability in representing street addresses. For example, an address in San Francisco, California may have variations in the way the city is represented: SF, San Francisco, San Fran, the City by the Bay are all alternate denotations of the same city.

9 August 2006Ken Laskey8 Again from SOA-RM, There is often a huge potential for variability in representing street addresses. For example, an address in San Francisco, California may have variations in the way the city is represented: SF, San Francisco, San Fran, the City by the Bay are all alternate denotations of the same city. So not only am I looking for a property of city but I have to be able to consistently interpret the value given to that property.

9 August 2006Ken Laskey9 Another example... My color vocabulary just deals with basic colors: red, green, blue, yellow, orange, purple

9 August 2006Ken Laskey10 Another example... My color vocabulary just deals with basic colors: red, green, blue, yellow, orange, purple We agree on a vocabulary including the property of color.

9 August 2006Ken Laskey11 Another example... My color vocabulary just deals with basic colors: red, green, blue, yellow, orange, purple We agree on a vocabulary including the property of color. You search for a shirt in a nice mauve.

9 August 2006Ken Laskey12 Another example... My color vocabulary just deals with basic colors: red, green, blue, yellow, orange, purple We agree on a vocabulary including the property of color. You search for a shirt in a nice mauve. You find nothing because my property value vocabulary doesn’t include the same values as yours.

9 August 2006Ken Laskey13 So what is needed for the distributed world of SOA-RM?

9 August 2006Ken Laskey14 So what is needed for the distributed world of SOA-RM? Clearly defined indication of the vocabulary from which properties originate

9 August 2006Ken Laskey15 So what is needed for the distributed world of SOA-RM? Clearly defined indication of the vocabulary from which properties originate Clearly defined indication of the vocabulary from which property values originate

9 August 2006Ken Laskey16 So what is needed for the distributed world of SOA-RM? Clearly defined indication of the vocabulary from which properties originate Clearly defined indication of the vocabulary from which property values originate Eventually, clearly defined mechanisms for mediating between clearly defined vocabularies

9 August 2006Ken Laskey17 If not ontologies, then what?