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Rick,
You raise some interesting points, especially about buying/selling
things and the role of XML in all this.
I'm constantly astounded to see plain text systems in use where
information that should be sent/received in structured formats
is instead sent in plain text. And simply rekeye at the other
end.
A document comes in, saying purchase order at the top, and then
with no frilly formatting, is handed over to sales for keying
and then to despatch for packing.
It's a case where every single document gets manually checked
through the whole process.
So all the recognitive skills you are talking about are done
by humans. and there's very little for the computers to do
except sit on the wire and poll the email.
I'm not saying that this is bad, just a bit sad for people
who want to get things into structured formats and "process"
them.
For many companies around the world, this is where they
are today.
To structure the data more, to xml even, I think they will
need more compelling reasons to do so. I don't think those
compelling reasons are being pushed.
So there are a few challenges ahead...
David
Quoting Rick Marshall <rjm@zenucom.com>:
> i can't possibly put all my understanding of this problem succintly
> enough for a short email, but here are a few pointers to my ideas:
>
> my basic point is that owl et al are inadequate as a basic principle for
> semantic anything. why? well like roger alluded to in the english
> language comments - what makes evenly poorly composed english
> understandable? part of the answer is word roles - verbs are not just a
> syntactic device, they are semantically very different to nouns. if i
> simply give you the words "boy" and "ball" you have very little
> information. if i add to that word list a verb - "throws" you can start
> to derive meaning. in document terms "order" "goods" "buy" has
> meaning... "order" "goods" lacks purpose (unless you accept order as a
> verb). things like ebxml and uml try to address this and for my money an
> extension of this idea to be the fundamental of the semantic web is
> essential. the we can say things like "this message is buying goods -
> maybe it's an order".
>
> next there's the problem of recognition - i'm happy that a neural net is
> probably the only way to do this in a general sense. this implies
> training (constantly) - but then kids need school too and the brain is
> the most sophisticated and complex device we know. my view is that if
> the most complex and competent device in the known universe requires
> significant training to do things, then there's some sort of biblical
> arrogance in our assumption that we can simply write down some rules and
> build a device that works as well.
>
> i'd be very interested to know if anyone on this list has tried using
> neural nets rather than schemas to classify xml documents and/or if
> anyone is interested in setting up some experiments to try it out.
>
> and one final point - back to the sum is greater than the whole. i was
> thinking about this in terms of an element algebra. group theory defines
> a group by operations (verbs :) ) that when applied to members of the
> group (usually, but i guess not necessarily, 2 members - could be
> ternary operators) result in a member of the group. integer + integer =>
> integer. but if you have a group member you have no way of knowing if it
> was derived by operation (and there may be an infinite number of
> contruction operations), which one, or does it just exist in it's own
> right. the number 4 as an integer has different properties to the
> numbers 1 and 3, but can be constructed from them. if i have a bunch of
> logs or steel bars they could be the parts for a bridge or a scaffold or
> ladder etc. the construction again has some meaning beyond the parts.
>
> back to <>s. our scientific culture is deconstructive (break it down to
> find the meaning) while our engineering is constructive (put it together
> to make something) and we are creatures of action (use the things we
> make to do something) all the time fighting dS/dt > 0 (trying to create
> order from chaos).
>
> my answer to your question roger is in principle yes, but we need xml
> technologies in all 4 areas above to do it.
>
> rick
>
> Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>
> >And the fact of trading (that these components are created and
> >shared by some network of traders "dynamically assembled by
> >one system and shipped to another where the assembly is
> >dynamically understood") infers that some common maps already
> >exist, aka, the upper level enterprise/market ontology.
> >
> >Intentionality is the impetus of ontology.
> >
> >No matter how simple the intent is, it will shape the
> >understanding. It is a centrality and may be a transient
> >or permanent attractor that creates meaning.
> >
> >len
> >
> >
> >From: Bullard, Claude L (Len)
> >
> >From: Roger L. Costello [mailto:costello@mitre.org]
> >
> >
> >
> >>I assume that this question has as its impetus ...
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Here's my motivation for the question: in a large, complex Enterprise you
> >may know the kinds of "things" that need to be moved around (e.g., Book,
> >BookCover, etc) but you don't have a-priori knowledge of the specific
> >transactions that will be needed.
> >
> >So, is it feasible to simply declare a bunch of components (that everyone
> >understands), which may be dynamically assembled by one system and shipped
> >to another system where the assembly is dynamically understood.
> >
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