Semantics:How Semantic Technologies are

Tranforming Information Systems

Semantic Arts, Inc.

Dave McComb

for Minneapolis DAMA January 18th 2006

January 18, 2006 © Semantic Arts, Inc 2005/2006. 2

Objectives

Semantics > Good Definitions

Exotic Terminology

Pursue this further

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Discipline

Standards

Tools

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Semantic Web

Semantic Technology

Semantic Methodology,

Design & Approach

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Discipline

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Part 1: Intro, Concepts and

Methods

Part 2: Semantic Metadata and

Annotated Data

Part 3: Semantic Web

Part 4: Demos

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Semantic Concepts, Discipline and Methods

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Part 1: Intro, Concepts and

Methods

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Semantics

The study of meaning(sometimes the study of

the meaning of words)

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Structure and Metadata

You can now deal with thousands, even millions of transactions, by knowing only a small amount of metadata

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Drowning in Metadata

Thousands -> millions of bits of metadata

Meta metadata?XMI/MOF/CWM Millions ->

Billions of instances in hundreds of databases

Commit to share ontologies to get back to thousands/ tens of thousands of concepts

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Operative SemanticsSome of these fields are “known” to the system and cause overt changes in

behavior

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Others are more subtle

This one shows up on the detailed P&L

reports

This one shows up in the AP list of bills

to pay

This one shows up on the check

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None of this is mentioned in the user manual or on line help text

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Scale issues

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Carver Mead

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Flat Earth Schema

We need to get up out of the weeds

Higher level, business concepts

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Discipline

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Part 2: Semantic Metadata and

Annotated Data

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Metadata and Annotated Data

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Content: FOAF

Friend Of A Friend Ontology for contacts

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Content: Dublin Core

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So, how do we do this?

Business Vocabulary

Taxonomy

Ontology

Description Logic

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Business Vocabulary

Not whether, but – when:

• as you come across the terms, or up front?– what source:

• source documents, interviews or existing systems?

– how:• defining terms or concepts?

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Business Vocabulary

Schema Jargon

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Injured workers -- representatives

Information contained in the claim files and records of injured workers, under the provisions of this title, shall be deemed confidential and shall not be open to public inspection (other than to public employees in the performance of their official duties), but representatives of a claimant, be it an individual or an organization, may review a claim file or receive specific information therefore upon the presentation of the signed authorization of the claimant.

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Employers -- Representatives

Employers or their duly authorized representatives may review any files of their own injured workers in connection with any pending claims.

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Claimant

A claimant may review his or her claim file if the director determines, pursuant to criteria adopted by rule, that the review is in the claimant's interest.

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Patient

Except as otherwise provided by law, all treatment records shall remain confidential. Treatment records may be released only to the persons designated in this section, or to other persons designated in an informed written consent of the patient….[much more]

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Child Victims

Information revealing the identity of child victims of sexual assault who are under age eighteen is confidential and not subject to public disclosure. Identifying information means the child victim's name, address, location, photograph, and in cases in which the child victim is a relative or stepchild of the alleged perpetrator, identification of the relationship between the child and the alleged perpetrator.

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Dilbert’s Boss Understands This

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“How to”

Sources– Documents– Existing systems– Controlled Vocabularies– Interviews

Techniques– Distinctionary– Concept -> Term

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Documents

Information contained in the claim files and records of injured workers, under the provisions of this title, shall be deemed confidential and shall not be open to public inspection (other than to public employees in the performance of their official duties), but representatives of a claimant, be it an individual or an organization, may review a claim file or receive specific information therefore upon the presentation of the signed authorization of the claimant.

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Existing systems

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Vocabulary Item:

“A variety of language unique to an individual”

Idiolect

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Every System We Design or Buy…

… is another ideolect

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Interviews

•Enumerate types•Look for counter examples•Look for similarities•Synonyms

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Warning:

Definitions are hard to get consensus onAnd often not worth it

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Example good Definition

Customer:Groups or individuals who have a business relationship with the organization--those who receive and use or are directly affected by the products and services of the organization. Customers include direct recipients of products and services, internal customers who produce services and products for final recipients, and other organizations and entities that interact with an organization to produce products and services.

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Another Problems with Definitions

Homonym problem– Same lexical word means different things

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SUMO and WordNet

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Concept

Avoids the generalized definition trapDrastically speeds up discovery (have you

ever tried to get a group of experts to agree on the meaning of a set of terms)

Finesses the homonymy problem

Term or Terms

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Process

Tease apart the facets of a given definition.People will generally agree with the facets.They won’t necessarily agree on the same

combination of facets mapping to the base word you started with.

Ask: what could we call each bundle of facets that they care about?

e.g., mother

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Key Concept: The Distinctionary

Is: a glossary

Is distinct from other glossaries: structurally, each definition first specifies the more general type of thing the word is, and then provides a way to distinguish this thing from others that are similar.

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Example

Patient:

A patient is a role between a human being and a healthcare delivery institution.

It is different from other roles between a human and a healthcare delivery institution in that the human had been the recipient of the delivery of diagnostic or corrective health care services.

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Taxonomies

Business Vocabulary

Taxonomy

Ontology

Description Logic

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Taxonomy

“A taxonomy is a system for classifying and organizing large amounts of information”

Seth Earley www.earley.com

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DMOZ

Home– Gardening– Personal Finance– Cooking

• Baking• Casseroles• Camping

– Dutch Oven

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Formal Taxonomy

Animalia

ArthopodaChordata

Mammalia

Carnivora

PantheraGenus

Species

Family

Order

Class

Phylum

Kingdom

Felidae

Ursus

(bears)leo

(lion)

tigris

(tiger)

isa?isa?

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Subsumption v. Inheritance

Dynamic v. Static

+PaidToDate() : int+Reserve() : int

-pensionAmt : int

Pension

+ClaimMgr() : object+DaysLost() : int

-TimeLoss : bool-ReturnToWork : Date

Claim

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Ontology --Frame based

Business Vocabulary

Taxonomy

Ontology

Description Logic

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Ontology Definition

“A specification of a conceptualization”

Tom Gruber

Taxonomy: Ontology::Tree: Network

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Limits of Taxonomy

Disjointedness

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Concept: A Small Ontology

GP (Genealogy Primitives)PersonM/FSpouseParent

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Consider my family Database

MName FName Sex DoB EyeColor

Naomi John M 11/18/52 Grey

Betty William F 12/20/15 Hazel

Walter Crete M 11/15/17 Blue

Heidi Dave F 12/1/88 Blue

Naomi John M 4/3/54 Blue

Name

Dave

Naomi

John

Addie

Tommy

... ... ... ... ......

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What kinds of queries could I do?

Any view qualified by the attributes– (show everyone born before 1/1/1990)

Some join based queries– (show all of Dave’s children)

But it gets much more complex after that

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Committing to an Ontology

MName FName Sex DoB EyeColor

Naomi John M 11/18/52 Grey

Betty William F 12/20/15 Hazel

Walter Crete M 11/15/17 Blue

Heidi Dave F 12/1/88 Blue

Naomi John M 4/3/54 Blue

Name

Dave

Naomi

John

Addie

Tommy

... ... ... ... ......

Person

Person

Gender

PersonSpouse

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Concept: Committing and Sharing

GP (Genealogy Primitives)

GC (Genealogy Concepts)

My Family

Commits toCommits to

PersonM/FSpouseParent

Dave is maleDave is Addie’s parentAddie is femaleNaomi is Dave’s parentNaomi is Tom’s parent

Father…Uncle…Cousin…Second Cousin, etc. …

Key concept: queries/ inference can be executed using ontological definitions I’m not even aware of

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Good Resource

Ontology Development 101: A Guide to creating your first ontology

Natalya Noy and Deborah McGuinnesshttp://www.ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm/papers/ontology-tutorial-noy-mcguinness.pdf

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Description Logics

Business Vocabulary

Taxonomy

Ontology

Description Logic

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Description Logics

This is where the rigor comes in.

Three things that take some getting used to:– Classes and Instances interchangeable– Allowing the system to do some of the design

work for you– Open world logic

Plus some very strange terminology and symbology

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Description Logics Points of Departure

As much as possible, minimize the number of concepts that have to be accepted axiomatically.

Emphasize formal definitions for all the rest.

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DL Definitions

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Classes and Instances

Database designers make an early design decision as to what is going to be metadata (classes, columns, etc.) and what is going to be instance data.

For ontologists, this is a continually moving target.

Additionally, properties (which could be equivalent to attributes or relationships) are “free floating” and can be attached to classes, but don’t “belong” to them in the same way as with database models.

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Allowing the System to Do some Design

Declared

Inferred

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Open World

In closed world (i.e., SQL), absence of information is assumed to be negation. If the query doesn’t find it, it doesn’t exist.

In open world (DL), things are assumed to be possible until proven otherwise.

In DL, classes are assumed to overlap unless they are explicitly declared to be disjoint.

Domain and range are used for reasoning, not constraining.

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Motherhood

Sue is John’s biological motherSarah is John’s biological mother

Therefore?

George Washington’s mother

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Other strange vocabulary

DL Term English Description MeaningPartial Necessary Primitive, or

defined classesIf something is a member of this class then it is necessary to fulfill these conditions

Complete Necessary & Sufficient

Derived or defined classes

If something fulfills these conditions, then it is a member of this class

TBox Terms Metadata Reasoning in the ontology

ABox Assertions instances Reasoning over the data

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Content

Business Vocabulary

Taxonomy

Ontology

Description Logic

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Discipline

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Semantic Web

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Essence at each level

TCP/IP Global Physical Addressing

DNS/URL Global Logical Addressing

XML Universal Parsing

XSD Allowable Structure

RDF Assertions / Merging

RDFS Frames / Classes

OWL Inference / Reasoning

SWRL Rule Execution

March 2004

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TCP/IP

Single model for communicationGlobally unique physical addressing

216.239.37.99

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DNS / URL

Logical address need not = physical addressAllows rehosting, migration, etc.

www.google.com

DNS 216.239.37.99

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XML

Uniform parsing rules, tools, etc.Metadata (at least some of it) travels with the

data.

<book> “DaVinci Code”<author> “Dan Brown” </author>

</book>

<h1> “DaVinci Code”<p> “Dan Brown” </p>

</h1>

XML

HTML/ XHTML

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XSD

Rules about allowable XML combinationsCan verify XML validityPrimarily for creating XML, not consuming it

<xs:element name="sculpture"><xs:annotation>

<xs:documentation>Comment describing your root element</xs:documentation>

</xs:annotation></xs:element>

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RDF

Resource Description FrameworkSubject/Predicate/Object“Triple” and “Triple Store”Make assertionsMerge identities[proto truth]

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“Triples”

Subject ObjectPredicate

A URI (URL) A URI (URL) A URI (URL) or Literal

Think instances

Subject/Predicate/Object

Dave McComb Sem in Buswrote

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RDF Triples from a Database

Order2 Molson 5/12/05 Net10

Custo

mer

ID

Order3 Coors 5/12/05 Net10

Order4 Budweiser 5/12/05 Net10

Order5 Miller 5/14/05 Net10

Order1 Miller 5/12/05 Net10

Order

Date

Term

Code

Order2 CustomerID Molson

Order2 OrderDate “5/12/05”

Order2 TermCode “Net10”

Molson Molson Ale

Coors Rocky Mountain

Budweiser Clydesdales

Miller Miller Brewing

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RDF Triples from a Document

<Order> Order2 <Special Labeling> “for winterfest” </Special Labeling></Order>

Order2 Special Labeling “for winterfest”

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Simple Merge

Order2 CustomerID Molson

Order2 OrderDate “5/12/05”

Order2 TermCode “Net10”

Order2 Special Labeling “for winterfest”

Order2 CustomerID Molson

OrderDate

“5/12/05”TermCode

“Net10”

Special Labeling

“for winterfest”

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First Principles

Two things equal to the same thing are equal to each other.

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MER1 & 2 and Spirit

MER2 is Opportunity

MER1 has APXS1

APXS1 has CalibrationSet1

Spirit is MER1

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Reification

Each Assertion (statement) has its own URIand can therefore be the Object of another Assertion

Statement 2715

Sushi sameAs RawFish

Dave thinksStmt 2715

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Reification is Useful For

VeracityProvenanceSecurity

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RDFS

RDF SchemaMeta Data for RDFAdds classes, properties, subclasses

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RDFS adds Properties

Order CustomerIDhasProperty

OrderDate

TermCode

hasPropertyhasProperty

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RDFS Subtypes

Order subTypeOf Agreement

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OWL

Web Ontology Language Comes in three flavors

– OWL Lite– OWL DL (Description Logics)– OWL Full

Adds Reasoning

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OWL DL

Necessary & sufficient

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OWL DL

Person

ParentAncestor

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SWRL

OWL + RuleML

Adds more complex reasoning and the ability to execute action

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SWRL

If y is x’s parent, and z is y’s brother, then z is x’s uncle.

parent(?x,?y) ^ brother(?y,?z) ^ uncle(?x,?z)

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Tools

That use this stack of standards

Discipline

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Tool: Protege

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Tool: AeroText

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Infrastructure

Discipline

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Infrastructure: Siderean

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Infrastructure: Cerebra

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Questions?

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Re cap

Semantics can dramatically reduce the complexity and increase the flexibility of your rule based (or non rule based) systems.

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To pursue further

Send an email to me at mccomb@semanticarts.com

For either a glossary of semantic terms or the “CIO’s Guide to Semantics” [I have a few bound copies]

Visit our web site, many interesting free white paperswww.semanticarts.com

Semantic Wikiwww.semanticwiki.com

Semantic Technology Conferencewww.semantic-conference.com

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Resources – Books

“Semantics in Business Systems,” print and audio

“Semantic Web Primer” Grigoris Antoniou“The Semantic Web” Michael Daconta et

al.“Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things”

George Lakoff

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One last word

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www.semanticarts.comSemantic Arts, Inc.