10.27.11
Learning Ontology at KEOD
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This week I am at the KEOD 2011 Conference learning about the application of ontology. The conference is about Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development. Before you decide to skip the rest of this article, consider that ontology may be the most important change in the way information technology is applied in the future.
What is so exciting is that ontology is not about some grand new technology. It is about an approach to viewing the world we live in that goes all the way back to Plato. It is an approach that has always proven to have significant value and may now be ready to move to a whole new level.
Ontology is about capturing knowledge in a form that is not aligned with any spoken language. The languages being used are more mathematical. It is like storing music as notes on bars. It can be understood by computers as well as humans.
By having languages that capture knowledge that can be passed on to computers we are provided with new opportunities for the development of software applications. One of the most significant opportunities is to construct applications that can be proven to be accurate without integration testing.
Traditionally, software development has been aligned with development engineering methodologies. In these methodologies, the final step before deploying a new application is integration testing. These tests are to make sure that the new system will perform accurately within the context of the enterprise and all of the system components will perform accurately within the context of the application.
By applying knowledge-based analysis, applications can be proven to be accurate without actually running them. Mathematics has over the years been focused on describing how things work and proving theorems to provide explanation. Often mathematicians have discovered new worlds of knowledge that found no real application for years. Astronomers observe the universe and conjecture on the existence of things we can’t see. Ontology brings this same disciple of deduction to information technology. It is possible to prove the accuracy of a business application before it is constructed.
I expect to learn more about the current state of ontology at KEOD as well as to share my perspective in a paper, The OTTER Project. OTTER is for Ontology Technology That Executes Real-time. As I learn more and the OTTER Project proceeds, I will share more.
My investigation into ontology began after I published the book, Enterprise Architects Masters of the Unseen City. In the book I used relational data notation to define data architecture. The notation used was generic and would work with any relational database. But for me this was not good enough so I sought a better way of describing information.
My research led me to ontology and specifically to the ontology language OWL. The more I learn, the more I am excited about the great work that so many have done to reach this level of understanding. I am thrilled to be able to attend the KEOD 2011 Conference and I am humbled by having an opportunity to present a paper.
The Enterprise Architects can see what is coming and are already preparing. They know that this will be their time. Corporations will be able to completely focus on their business, and automation will be viewed as an agile enabler. Automation will finally become the self-service contributor that the Corporate Office has always wanted it to be. –Enterprise Architects Masters of the Unseen City
Closing the Business / IT gap.
