The Second School, ontologyMapping thread

Friday, April 07, 2006

Community centric service methodology à [home]

Andrew’s weblog à [link]

As part of some research into the Community Centric Service Methodology (CCSM) we spent some time finding pdf files on contracts. In the OASIS BCM specification we find some preliminary specifications about human choice points. We follow this specification and refine and extend from it is several directions.

In the context of CCSM, choice points are places where decisions are made. We see there being four types of decisions

1) individual decision

2) collective decision requiring an informal understanding (often without precise agreements)

3) collective decision requiring a well specified memorandum of understanding

4) decisions involving complete legally binding contracts

The CCSM will specify a formal ontology (expressed in OWL Full) for each of these cases. These formal ontologies will assist in gaining conformity to a common set of high-level concepts about decisions. Choice points will then specify which type of decision is identified, and the formal ontology will help create additional information structure, which may be used, consequent to the decision.

As background on ontology mediated contracts we suggest reading the following:

http://csdl2.computer.org/comp/mags/ds/2005/11/oy001.pdf

http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/research/pubs/trs/papers/914.pdf

In the second reference, a new distributed modeling language, called Promela, is discussed. The authors suggest a separation of the behavioral description of contract representation from a corresponding implementation (in Promela).

As in the stratified approach, (Prueitt), a substrate to behavioral response is found through an analysis of invariance. This substrate has a small number of elements that serve to aggregate as any one of a large number of contracts. The CCSM specification will follow this approach.

The requirement to form a new choice point may itself require “services”. But once the requirements are partially specified the CCSM will specify how more than one template, or blueprint, can be offered to the parties involved in the choice point.

The author also talk about the use of deontic logic:

In English, these axioms say, respectively:

If it ought to be that A implies B, and it ought to be that A, then it ought to be that B;
If it ought to be that A, then it is permissible that A.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontic_logic

This type of logic is similar to what is discussed by Prueitt regarding the Russian quasi axiomatic theory.

The CCSM specification will suggest how OWL, deontic logic and QAT may be used to support complex decisions at choice points, and both monitor consequences and prepare resources to be presented at future choice points.