Friday, April 07, 2006
The Second School of Semantic Science
ontologyMapping Glass Bead Games
Focus on the Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP)
and
related discussion about views, viewpoints and community centric
Continuing
discussion on the SOS CoP forum
Communication from Jay
Paul, et al,
I have not weighed into the discussion until now (largely due to being buried in work!), so forgive me if this note is in any way tangential to the main threads.
It occurs to me that one of the fundamental open issues in discussions about ontology, semantics and the development of standards (e.g., RM-ODP, OWL, etc) concerned with distributed computing is the abstract notion of "enterprise."
As a foundational notion "enterprise," let alone group concepts of "communities of interest," "collaboration," "jointness," "federations" and so on, is plagued with ambiguity.
The community (!) of researchers and practioners dealing with the semantic web would benefit from a succinct and "operational" (i.e., pragmatic) definition of enterprise. Only then can a meaningful discourse emerge about collaboration among enterprises, the communities or federations [the Jeffersonian rules of a free society) that arise out of specific needs (common cause), the dynamics (e.g., temporal properties) that lead to viability, Ontologies that underwrite discourse and behaviors within and among enterprises, individual and group policy-based constraints, matters of governance, and so on.
I have struggled with this issue for 25 years in designing and fielding "distributed real-time process control systems" that govern (a la enterprise "autopilots") the individual and group behaviors of electric power generation and distribution systems, petrochemical production, fine chemical plants, and so on.
These "enterprises" are inherently distributed, require synchronization (a specific form of collaboration), act as containers (with user control interfaces) for their human actors, and, to be sure, have nasty side-effects if their operation, individually or in concert, in any way degrades or fails.
The same issues arise in institutions of government (e.g., Katrina!), commerce (supply chains), defense (joint forces commands), and healthcare.
I am now working on "enterprise command and control" (EC2) systems that provide captain and officers of the good ship "enterprise" to effectively navigate, like aircraft in the FAA's flight control space, to operate under self- and group control policies. This objective requires an operational definition of [the good ship] "enterprise" and the [SOA-based] services the captain Kirk and his crew need for effective unilateral and multilateral governance.
I have developed a generalized enterprise model, one with a mathematical, institutional and engineering basis, for use in our EC2 development activities.
It would seem logical and prudent, if not necessary [certainly not sufficient], for the ontology community to do the same as relates to supporting communities of intelligent network "edge actors," their collaboration requirements and associated standards.
Jay