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Subject: RE: [bcm] Semantic Layers: Building out for business stake holders
Bob, Here, here. However, the concepts that the BCM group is advancing may not be easy dumb up as it is a really deep area, just as there is no "Quantum Physics for Dummies" book available for the same reason. What business folks do understand is Value Chain Assessment Techniques, as have been successfully applied at GSA and a number of commercial concerns. This approach focuses FIRST on defining the business needs and how these relate to needed processes, supported by technology. If we can front end the BCM with some type of Value Chain approach, I believe we can then position BCM as a critical part of a broader Enterprise Life Cycle. The ICH published a paper on this Value Chain Approach at the last SecurE-Biz Summit, and has been posted at www.ICHnet.org. The most important part of this business driven EA method is that it has already produced quantifiable business transformation results at GSA. Our desire to participate in various technical architecture standards efforts (OASIS BCM, OMG MDA, IEEE 1471, ISO RM-ODP), is to help bring a real business focus to these worthwhile efforts. As we are hosting the OASIS e-Gov TC meeting during our Fall EA Bootcamp in Northern VA, might I suggest we provide a platform for these and related issues to be discussed and promoted to the Federal EA community. Just my 2 Cents. Cheers, john -----Original Message----- From: Robert Greeves [mailto:GREEVESR@OJP.USDOJ.GOV] Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2003 5:27 PM To: bcm@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: Re: [bcm] Semantic Layers This is an excellent discussion of issues that are important to the evolution of our product. However, I sincerely hope that when the final product is agreed upon, that it will be written in a way that Business Executives can comprehend it without having to know the "jargon" of the Standards community. I find that concepts such as Metadata, Ontology, Taxonomy and Topic Maps go over the head of the average business person in government. If we want them to pay attention to our product we need to voice it in terms of the need to document our data using International standards, find ways to search for data that is of interest to us, generate schemas that can be used to facilitate information exchange, store artifacts in registries/repositories that will facilitate access and exchange, accommodate data exchange partnerships, etc., etc. etc. - in other words it needs to be written at the third grade level of common sense. **************************************************************************** *** >>> "CarlMattocks" <CarlMattocks@CHECKMi.com> 06/10/03 05:00PM >>> Folks: To ensure the 'discussion' on Semantic Layers (et al) has the appropriate focus - please peruse the assertions below and let me know : >if it is too trivial >what questions it prompts >what it does not say >where it could be used Semantic Layers Classification Semantic layers use semantic relationships and controlled vocabularies to increase the meaning of metadata and provide context to items that have metadata properties . Historically, semantic layers have been used by (information) scientists to classify unstructured knowledge. Currently there is a lost of discussion about expanding the application of semantic layers to provide domain links for semi-structured information and structured information. Whatever the usage, the key benefits of using semantic layers are:  The body of knowledge is partitioned into logical groupings  Users can discover information using a single word search term  Topic to sub-topic, drill down searches are supported  Domain scopes are declared  The ambiguities of the (English) language are less problematic Controlled Vocabulary, Taxonomy, Thesaurus, Ontology, Business Model, Topic Maps? A simple lexicon that only contains the definition of words used by a particular group of professionals can be considered a controlled vocabulary. Ontologies, Taxonomies and Thesauri relate terms in a controlled vocabulary via parent-child and associative relationships. Business Models contain associative relationships, they also contain explicit grammar rules to constrain how to use controlled vocabulary terms to express (model) something meaningful within a domain of interest. More formally : A controlled vocabulary is a list of elemental terms that have been enumerated explicitly. This list is controlled by and is available from an authority, such as, ACORD. Ideally, all elements in a controlled vocabulary have a unique label and an unambiguous, non-redundant definition, as in: 1. If a (term) token of an element label is commonly used to mean different concepts in different contexts, then that token is explicitly qualified to resolve the ambiguity. 2. If multiple terms are used to mean the same thing, they are considered (equally alternate) synonyms. A thesaurus is a networked collection of controlled vocabulary terms. This means that a thesaurus uses associative relationships in addition to broader-narrower (parent-child) relationships, e.g. synonym. The expressiveness of the associative relationships in a thesaurus vary and can be as simple as "related to term" as in term A is related to term B. A taxonomy is a collection of controlled vocabulary terms organized into a hierarchical structure. Each term in a taxonomy is in one or more parent-child relationships to other terms in the taxonomy. There may be different types of parent-child relationships in a taxonomy (e.g., whole-part, genus-species, type-instance). In a poly-hierarchy, a term can have multiple parents, yet it has the same children in every location. An ontology can mean different things and the definition continues to evolve since developers of agent-based software consider that each (semantic) web service must be defined in un-ambiguous terms. That is, ontologies allow a web service to be 'published' using a language that expresses something meaningful within a specified domain of interest. Therein, the ontology grammar contains formal constraints (e.g., specifies what it means to be a well-formed statement, assertion, query, etc.). OWL Web Ontology Language can be used to explicitly represent the meaning of terms in vocabularies and the relationships between those terms. However, it is intended to be used when the information contained in documents needs to be processed by applications, as opposed to situations where the content only needs to be presented to humans. A business model is an explicit model of the constructs and rules needed to map specific types of processing and data within a domain of interest e.g. namespace. Many accept the statement that the contents of a domain specific business model would contain the same type of knowledge as an ontology with the same scope. A Topic Map is an ISO standard for building knowledge about a domain and integrating this encoded knowledge to information resources that are considered relevant to the domain. Topic maps are organized around topics, which represent subjects of discourse; associations, representing relationships between the subjects; and occurrences, which connect the subjects to pertinent information resources. The first version used SGML DTDs the latest version is based on XSDs (schemas). A topic map processor is any module or system that can process topic maps. cheers carl Carl Mattocks CEO CHECKMi e-mail: CarlMattocks@checkmi.com ******************************************* Business Agent Software that Secures Knowledge for Reputation:Protection ******************************************* CHECKMi Compendium the shortcut to Valued & Trusted Knowledge ******************************************* www.checkmi.com (usa)1-908-322-8715 --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: bcm-unsubscribe@lists.oasis-open.org For additional commands, e-mail: bcm-help@lists.oasis-open.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: bcm-unsubscribe@lists.oasis-open.org For additional commands, e-mail: bcm-help@lists.oasis-open.org
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