ConferenceCall 2011 03 03

= OntologySummit2011: Panel Session-6 - "Integrating the Ontology Application Framework, Use Cases, Value and Metrics" - Thu 2011_03_03 =

Summit Theme: OntologySummit2011: Making the Case for Ontology

Session Title: Integrating the Ontology Application Framework, Use Cases, Value and Metrics

Session Chair: Dr. SteveRay (CMU)

Panelists:


 * Professor MichaelGruninger (U of Toronto) - "The Ontology Application Framework"
 * Mr. RexBrooks (Starbourne) - "Value Metrics"
 * Mr. MikeBennett (Hypercube) - "Use Cases - how they fit into the framework"


 * Archives:
 * Abstract
 * Agenda
 * Prepared presentation material can be accessed by clicking on each of the links below:
 * [ 1-Gruninger ] . [ 2-Brooks ] . [ 3-Bennett ] . [ 4-List-archives ]
 * Audio recording of the session [ 1:23:42 ; mp3 ; 9.6 MB ]
 * transcript of the online chat during the session
 * Additional Resources

Abstract
OntologySummit2011 Theme: "Making the Case for Ontology"


 * Session Title: Integrating the Ontology Application Framework, Use Cases, Value and Metrics

This is our 6th Ontology Summit, a joint initiative by NIST, Ontolog, NCOR, NCBO, IAOA & NCO_NITRD. The theme adopted for this Ontology Summit is: "Making the Case for Ontology."

This year's Ontology Summit seeks to address the need to provide concrete evidence of successful deployment of ontologies by examining several application domains for such examples, and in better articulating where different "strengths" of ontological representation are best applied. To support that, the summit also aims to classify the categories of applications where ontology has been, and could be, successfully applied; to identify distinct types of metrics that might be used in evaluating the return on investment in an ontology application (cost, capability, performance, etc.); to lay out some strategies for articulating a case for ontological applications; and to identify remaining challenges and roadblocks to a wider deployment of such applications that represent promising application areas and research challenges for the future. The findings of the summit will be documented in the form of a communiqué intended for public consumption.

This session begins the process of combining the excellent work done within several of the tracks. Specifically, we will hear from Track 1 - Ontology Application Framework - where MichaelGruninger will describe how they have categorized various classes of applications that use, or could use, ontology. Then, RexBrooks (Track 3 - Value Metrics and Value Models) will show how this fits into a larger context where the applications and measures of benefits form a context that includes the different kinds of stakeholders and how different benefit (or value) metrics can be of use to different audiences and with different kinds of applications. Finally, MikeBennett (Track 2 - Documented case studies) will show how some of the use cases we have seen fit into these frameworks.

The second half of the session will be open for discussion and questions.

See developing details on this Summit series of events at: OntologySummit2011 (home page for this summit)

Agenda
Ontology Summit 2011 - Panel Session-6


 * Session Format: this is a virtual session conducted over an augmented conference call


 * 1. Opening (chair) - SteveRay [10 min.]  [ presentation material ]
 * 2. Panelists presentations - MichaelGruninger, RexBrooks, MikeBennett [15 min. each]
 * 3. Q & A and open discussion [All: 60 min.] -- please refer to process above
 * 4. Wrap-up / Announcements (co-chair) - SteveRay

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 --

[09:27] PeterYim: PeterYim: Welcome to the ...

OntologySummit2011: Panel Session-6 - Thu 2011_03_03

Summit Theme: OntologySummit2011: Making the Case for Ontology

Session Title: Integrating the Ontology Application Framework, Use Cases, Value and Metrics

Session Co-chairs: Dr. SteveRay (CMU)

Panelists:


 * Professor MichaelGruninger (U of Toronto) - "The Ontology Application Framework"
 * Mr. RexBrooks (Starbourne) - "Value Metrics"
 * Mr. MikeBennett (Hypercube) - "Use Cases - how they fit into the framework"

Please refer to dial-in information, agenda, and other details on the session page at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2011_03_03

anonymous morphed into MattHettinger

anonymous morphed into MarcyHarris

SteveRay: Cheat sheet: *2 to mute, *3 to unmute

anonymous morphed into RandyColeman

MichaelUschold: test

MikeBennett: No joy

MikeBennett: Tried the magic thing

MikeBennett: I'll diall out and in again

anonymous morphed into NaicongLi

anonymous morphed into JulitaBermejoAlonso

SteveRay: Sorry about that, Rex. Your voice is definitely clearer with the handset.

NicolaGuarino: Maybe we should specify "where" the functionality provided by ontologies is applied. E.g, specification is applied to conceptualizations; classification can be applied to concepts or indivduals...

SteveRay: One of the "-ilities" that fell off is "capability"

SteveRay: @MichaelGruninger: Interesting that you didn't choose "specification" in the Integration category, as well as mapping.

RexBrooks: @MichaelGruninger: I think of Decision Support as marshalling information more than automated inferencing. However, if the inferencing marshall information, then I'm good with it.

NicolaGuarino: Information integration can also occur at development time, in the sense that ontologies are used to manually integrate different conceptual models. In these cases, ontologies can also help to recognize the impossibility of integration...

MichaelGruninger: @Nicola: "Where an ontology is used" might indeed be another dimension in the framework

MichaelGruninger: @Nicola: Although information integration can occur at design time, I put this into the Ontology Augmentation system category because it is being used to integrate conceptual models before the system itself is designed. Unless you mean that conceptual models are integrated, in which case I wonder whether this is also being used at run-time

SteveRay: @MichaelGruninger: It would be great if you could add the answers you gave on the phone to the wiki page, for each of the classes of applications, i.e. which dimension, who is the user, etc.

RandyColeman: @MichaelGruninger: Have you had thoughts about multi-dimension/multi-classification ontologies?

MichaelUschold: Let me walk people through this - http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/OntologySummit2011/ApplicationFramework/OWL-Ontology/

MichaelUschold: look at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/OntologySummit2011/ApplicationFramework/OWL-Ontology/OntologyAppli cationFramework.pdf

RexBrooks: @MichaelUschold: One thing I didn't think about was results v. value metrics. sometimes the results are unfavorable and we need to capture that and learn from it., too.

FabianNeuhaus: @ MichaelGruninger: are "problem addressed" and "benefit" different dimensions? Wouldn't being able to address a problem be a benefit?

MichaelGruninger: @Fabian: Earlier discussions have indicated a need to distinguish the benefit an ontology can deliver from the original problem that motivated the use of the ontology in the first place.

MattHettinger: @MichaelGruninger if a set of ontologies are used at design time for a system other than the ontology system that is being used (e.g. some line-of-business system) then the use of that set of ontologies, that ontology system, can be (should be) considered a run-time use.

SteveRay: @MichaelUschold: Probably the best way to decide what perspective to take with your diagrams is to think about the original purpose of the Summit, which is to help people trying to make the case. If a given aspect doesn't speak to that, then you won't need to include it.

SteveRay: @MichaelUschold: We lost your audio. Can you dial back in?

MichaelUschold: how long ago did you miss me?

SteveRay: @MichaelUschold: It was only recent. You were doing the benefits.

FabianNeuhaus: @MichaelUschold: I think you were about to finish your presentation (when you got cut off)

PeterYim: @MichaelUschold - you should be back on now ... try your voice

PavithraKenjige: Generally cost benefit is analyzed during Business Case development to get funding.. these are good points..

anonymous morphed into BartGajderowicz

NicolaGuarino: what is it Ajax?

SteveRay: @Nicola: See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_framework for material on Ajax.

JimRhyne: Ajax is a browser programming technique that ships data to the browser in XML and uses Javascript to perform local interactions with the user, avoiding the need for roundtrips with the http server.

BartGajderowicz: AJAX was developed by a UI designer, so its benefits are best demonstrated by example. Google maps is great for that. Ontologies may not be as easily demonstrable. Actually, that designer specifically coined the term AJAX because explaining the technology was not "selling" the it.

JimRhyne: @MichaelUschold - curious about the diagramming technique shown in e6owl Legend PDF. Can you point me to additional documentation. I work on the OWL profiles for UML.

DJimRhyne: @MichaelUschold - never mind, found it on the Semantic Arts website.

JustinCote: I think this is why we like PowerPoints

SteveRay: @MikeBennett: It looks like many of the case study providers gave benefits, but we're having difficulty getting all the way to actual metrics.

MikeBennett: @SteveRay I agree, that is a challenge. I hope we can get some of the Case Study presenters to come back and put metrics in, in line with what's now in the Metrics track.

RexBrooks: @Steve: Sorry for jumping the gun on ya.

SteveRay: @Rex: No problem at all.

RexBrooks: @MikeBennett: Excellent work. Extracting these is no picnic.

NicolaGuarino: my audio got disconnected. Calling again.

MichaelGruninger: @MikeBennett: I think that the Purpose of the ontology that I presented is synonymous with your term "Challenges"

MikeBennett: Agreed.

MichaelUschold: I also agree, ontology features describe the ontology, as @MichaelGruninger is saying.

SteveRay: @MikeBennett: Do you observe good coverage over all the dimensions and aspects that MichaelGruninger laid out, or, just as interestingly, do you see clustering of use cases around just a few?

PeterYim: @JohnSowa - can you capture your point to this chat (so it will go into the transcript)

MichaelUschold: @JohnSowa: I build the ontology mainly to help clarify my own thinking, as well as to have more precise artifact to communicate to others. I was going round and round thinking about many distinctions. It was easier and faster for me to draw a picture (which translated into OWL) than write yet more text in say Word or html. I agree that many will not care about this mode of presenting a framework.

JimRhyne: @JohnSowa - is there no middle ground between inspiration and CYA?

BruceBray: The rare disruptive technologies / "killer apps" don't need boring metrics, but the usual incremental improvements often do in order to get funded.

MichaelGruninger: @JohnSowa: the issue is that we need a common way of specifying the use cases -- what are the relevant pieces of information that need to be included? If people have different expectations about what use cases are, then we have not made progress.

MichaelUschold: I very much agree with Fabian's point, that we want systematic way to think about and communicate the use cases.

JimRhyne: @JohnSowa - Steve Jobs is a brilliant risk taker who is supported by some of the brightest market, usability and technology analysts around. He does not invent iPADs in a vacuum.

MichaelGruninger: We also need to battle Buzzword Bingo -- if someone says "I used an ontology for semantic integration" (or any other buzzword), we need everyone to agree on exactly what that means. Otherwise, people will be expecting something specific and then be disillusioned when they don't see it.

MichaelGruninger: @JohnSowa: Of course, if we had the one case (killer app) then we would use it. The problem is that people are using ontologies for many different reasons. Everyone has a different killer app that they are looking for.

MattHettinger: @RexBrooks (and any other who may have an answer) With respect to measures / metrics. A valid measure, at least in the relational approach to measurement, is that it is required that there is a empirical model, a numerical model, and a mapping between the two. If these do not exist then what is called a "measure", strictly speaking, is not a measure. Once consequence is the level of trust in the numbers produced. For the measures discussed, are there empirical models, numerical models and mappings. (I'm not familiar with other approaches to measurement)

RexBrooks: @MattHettinger: I agree, and yes, for measurements such as length of time for implementation, response time in the logs for performance, uptime v. downtime, etc, there is a correct and trustable relationship. However for qualitative measurements like Customer Satisfaction, which I expect many of us would not believe if it was just thrown at us to take at face value, it is more difficult. I'm not saying such qualitative measurements should be accepted. Quite the contrary. I think they need to be dissected and analyzed before any trust is achieved.

RexBrooks: Oh yeah, they have to be valid after the analysis, or else require a boatload of corroborating evidence.

SteveRay: Risk is another metric we might have overlooked - certainly important to many decision makers.

MikeBennett: @Michael there is a real risk of this in some of the ISO WGs (which shall remain nameless), where some technical folks are starting to describe semantics / ontology / OWL as some kind of magic paint.

MikeBennett: @SteveRay Definitely. At the business level, every business case comes down to one or other of cost and risk. What else is there?

MichaelUschold: This conversation is more about strategy than it is about integrating OAF, Value Metrics and Cases.

RexBrooks: @MichaelUschold: true, maybe you could put your hand and address "measuresBenefit?"

MikeBennett: Interoperability (business problem): Conceptual model (solution)?

MattHettinger: The killer app, from my perspective, is (inter-)enterprise architecture, as in both my research and EA practice, all of the use cases, to some degree, can be entailed by EA

PavithraKenjige: Many people did not like the abbreviation "OAF" .. can we do something about that?

JohnSowa: I agree that interoperability is essential.

BartGajderowicz: I 2nd the need for explaining the benefits of "semantics". Often people reject semantics based on individual implementations like RDF. Before people realize the benefits of ontologies, I often hear that the same problem can be solved using existing and less complex technologies. I hear that even Siri "can be done" using data mining techniques.

KenBaclawski: @BartGajderowicz: Are ontologies the "more complex" technology (compared with data mining, for example)? If that is true, perhaps we need to address the way ontologies are perceived. Data mining is hardly a simple technology, and ad hoc solutions to interoperability are very complex.

MikeBennett: @KenBaclawski one issue on perception: could also say that all apps have an ontology anyway, we are about managing ontologies, having an explicit ontology in some formal notation etc. i.e. simplifying the (existing) problem of ontologies

MichaelUschold: @KenBaclawski agree that ontology technology can reduce complexity in systems. Even if ontology technology is complex compared to other approaches (when viewed on their own), sometimes it takes a complex technology to simplify a greater whole.

KenBaclawski: @MichaelUschold: That is a good approach to dealing with the perception problem, but we need to try addressing it by a number of routes.

MikeBennett: Also conceptual model as an industry standard, which perhaps we haven't explicitly mentioned

PavithraKenjige: Interoperability -? We need businesses that used Ontology to do the case study regarding interoperability//

JohnSowa: For my answer, see slides 3 to 7 of http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/iss.pdf

NicolaGuarino: A general question I have is: how the ontology quality affects the benefits achieved for each of these use cases?

RexBrooks: @Nicola: Yes, exactly. Ideas?

NicolaGuarino: @RexBrooks: for example, in some cases a lightweight ontology is enough, in other cases it doesn't work at all...

MichaelUschold: @SteveRay: IHMO the real reason there are few case studies with metrics is because it is hard to have enough of the variables controlled to get any meaningful measures. Software projects do not lend themselves to this.

LeoObrst: In addition to benefits, you need to have costs, but also relative costs, which can be measured with respect to other metrics. E.g., degree of precision. Technology A vs. Technology B vs. ontologies may all eventually provide the same level of precision (of results, of transactions, etc.), but require much different costs to do so.

RexBrooks: @LeoObrst: Good points.

MikeBennett: @MichaelUschold - that is a very good point. Some industries are not native to systems development and won't have the metrics of what they did before, that did not work so well, by definition.

NicolaGuarino: I was just discussing with Rex about the need to evaluate the various case studies with respect to the quality and depth of the ontology they used

LeoObrst: We've found that people who have not gone through the XML "revolution" do not understand the value of semantics. When they adopt XML and find out it doesn't provide what they need, they begin to understand the difference between structural/syntactic approaches and semantic approaches.

MikeBennett: @LeoObrst - that exactly reflects the financial services industry experience

BobbinTeegarden: one of the major breakthroughs using ontologies/semantic web is the ability to visualize whole systems and interactions, getting a 'holonic' view of systems of systems -- looking for this at the granularity of 'application' may be missing the point

MattHettinger: @BobbinTeegarden - yes!

PeterYim: - session ended: 11:10 --

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


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Additional Resources:

 * Homepage of OntologySummit2011
 * Ontology Summit 2011 Launch Event - ConferenceCall_2011_01_20
 * "Ontology Application Framework" session - ConferenceCall_2011_02_03
 * "Ontology Applications & Use Cases - I" - ConferenceCall_2011_01_27
 * "Ontology Applications & Use Cases - II" - ConferenceCall_2011_02_10
 * "Value Metrics, Value Models and the Value Proposition" - ConferenceCall_2011_02_17
 * "Strategies for 'Making the Case'" - ConferenceCall_2011_02_24
 * [ontology-summit] mailing list archives - http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontology-summit/
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Attendees:

 * Attended:
 * SteveRay
 * MichaelGruninger
 * RexBrooks
 * MikeBennett
 * NicolaGuarino
 * PeterYim
 * AlStevens
 * AldenDima
 * RandyColeman
 * YuriyMilov
 * MattHettinger
 * JimRhyne
 * NaicongLi
 * KathleenEllis
 * PavithraKenjige
 * AmandaVizedom
 * BobbinTeegarden
 * BruceBray
 * DustinCote
 * FabianNeuhaus
 * JulitaBermejoAlonso
 * MarcyHarris
 * MichaelUschold
 * RickKiefer
 * JohnSowa
 * BobSmith
 * LeoObrst
 * KenBaclawski
 * BartGajderowicz


 * Expecting:
 * RamGouripeddi
 * TimWilson
 * DeedeeAkeo
 * ... if you are coming to the session, please add your name above (plus your affiliation, if you aren't already a member of the community) above; or e-mail  so that we can reserve enough resources to support everyone's participation. ...
 * ... if you are coming to the session, please add your name above (plus your affiliation, if you aren't already a member of the community) above; or e-mail  so that we can reserve enough resources to support everyone's participation. ...


 * Regrets:
 * YuLin
 * MatthewWest