![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www4.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de\/bizer\/pub\/lod-datasets_2008-09-18.png\" "\\"Linked")
<\/p>\nIn a recent post I mentioned comments by Sir Tim Berners-Lee concerning the overlap between enterprise information models and semantic web ontology supporting the concept of linked data.\u00a0 Sir Berners-Lee argued that overlap is already sufficient to have a transformative effect on mainstream IT.\u00a0 I think he is right, but also that we are not there yet.\u00a0 There are many obstacles to adoption, not the least of which is the inertia of enterprise IT.\u00a0 Disruptive approaches to software development typically require ten years or so to cross the chasm from visionary and early adopters to the mainstream.\u00a0 We are only a few years into this and the technology is not ready.<\/p>\n
First, let\u2019s establish that there is plenty of semantics available for reuse now.\u00a0 There are existing models, some of which are well-designed, mature, and widely used.\u00a0 Unfortunately, most of what exists has little apparent relevance to enterprises.\u00a0 There is little on this diagram that would draw the attention of an enterprise architect, for example.<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n Now, if there was an ontology for customer relationship management (CRM) or eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL<\/a>) in this diagram, it would get more attention.\u00a0 I suggest that semantic web technology will be approaching the enterprise when one of these shows up.<\/p>\n Still, some mature and widely-used ontologies may offer enterprise benefits.\u00a0 For example, the \u201cfriend-of-a-friend\u201d ontology provides the following concepts:<\/p>\n Every enterprise has some of FOAF\u2019s basic elements, like surnames, organizations, and projects.\u00a0 By linking their enterprise models to FOAF ontology, directly or indirectly, people across the enterprise and its value chain gain visibility to and flexibility in using information that would otherwise be expensive to provide and use.\u00a0 There is a lot to this that I will not go into here, including its relationship to business intelligence and enterprise performance management (but see entity analytics at IBM<\/a>, for example).\u00a0 Suffice it to say that there is meat on this bone.<\/p>\n As ontologies go, FOAF is small, at least in terms of its model, which consists of classes and properties.\u00a0 Generally speaking, the more mature and widely-used ontologies today are small models.\u00a0 Unfortunately, they are also isolated from one another.\u00a0 They have been developed by small communities that are substantially independent of one another.\u00a0 This reality is a symptom of a hurdle that needs to be crossed before semantics will cross the chasm to the mainstream.<\/p>\n Without collaboration, ontologies will remain small and independent.\u00a0 There will be isolated examples of large ontologies, such as OpenCyc<\/a> and interesting combinations of multiple ontologies, such as UMBEL<\/a>, but they will have no uptake until they are managed by a large community that includes enterprise members.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at the problem of enterprise modeling head on.\u00a0 Consider, for example, defining the model underlying Oracle CRM and Salesforce.COM.\u00a0 Or consider defining an application that produces the XML format now required of public companies by the Securities and Exchange Commission: XBRL.\u00a0 These ontologies would be huge compared to any that has been widely adopted on the semantic web.\u00a0 And yet, if such an ontology existed for SEC filings, it would have tremendous corporate relevance, especially to CFOs and in financial analysis at commercial banks and by the capital markets.\u00a0 As for CRM, you don\u2019t have to go far beyond FOAF to get the benefits of linked data and entity analytics.\u00a0 So much more functionality would emerge than any vendor can provide or maintain, such as in mash-ups using open technology and linked data, if CRM was ontological.\u00a0 (Mash-ups demonstrate that creativity is very powerful when unleashed.)<\/p>\n So, unless the vendors agree on an ontology for CRM or unless XBRL shifts from data modeling (e.g., XML schema definitions) to semantics, users are either doomed to redundant investments or trans-enterprise collaborative development of ontology is needed.\u00a0 (I would not hold my breath on the former!)\u00a0 I am ignoring a third alternative for the moment, which is that a technology startup or a professional organization gains significant traction or market leadership in providing such an ontology as a product or service offering.\u00a0 On the other hand, given the size of commercial ontologies such as these, even such a disruptive innovator will need to overcome the collaboration bottleneck with respect to ontology, which is my focus here.<\/p>\n The most promising approach for models that are common across enterprises may be to develop them using a wiki, as in Wikipedia.\u00a0 Certainly, some collaborative platform that exists \u201coutside the firewall\u201d is necessary.\u00a0 But we need this platform to avoid the problems of spam and nuisance editors that plague Wikipedia and other completely open platforms.\u00a0 We want to embrace the web\u2019s lack of authority but we don\u2019t want our platform to be completely egalitarian.\u00a0 We want the community to direct itself to a collective objective, which is ontology worthy of broad enterprise adoption.<\/p>\n If we are successful, completely open standards \u2013 the ontologies themselves – will be defined without committees.\u00a0 There are challenges to be sure, but it seems possible that such ontological standards are within reach, driven by those who will derive the most benefit: enterprise consumers. \u00a0There are things we need from ontology in order for it to be an enterprise worth standard, however.\u00a0 For one thing, we need version control.\u00a0 An enterprise cannot use an ontology that changes at the whim of a Wikipedia editor.<\/p>\n Take Semantic MediaWiki<\/a>, for example.\u00a0 If we use SMW as a platform for collaborative ontology and we adopt that ontology in resources that our CRM or financial systems make available as linked data, what happens when someone deletes or renames a concept that we use?<\/p>\n The solution is not as simple as making a copy of the ontology at a moment in time.\u00a0 Don\u2019t forget that people from around the world are editing at every hour.\u00a0 Asking the world to stop for a snapshot won\u2019t work.\u00a0 Nor will asking the world to unanimously agree that every concept in an ontology is right and final, at least for this version.\u00a0 No, more sophisticated change management is needed.<\/p>\n All this should sound familiar to enterprise architects. We hold our models increasingly tightly as we approach a release.\u00a0 And then they are fixed in stone until the next release.\u00a0 We avoid the challenges of collaboration above.\u00a0 We share at first and gradually take control.\u00a0 It works.<\/p>\n But this approach won\u2019t work across enterprises and is doomed to redundant investment within the enterprise.\u00a0 It may be tough to sell across enterprises but there is definite value and ROI if the collaboration can overcome the issues of change management.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, ontology standards and platforms simply don\u2019t address this problem yet.\u00a0 Chalk this up as another bridge for semantic technology to cross in order to cross the chasm.\u00a0 Some ideas for crossing that bridge follow.<\/p>\n We need the collaborative platform to allow convergence towards a stable ontology.\u00a0 At the very least, we need to converge on some parts of the ontology.\u00a0 If the community never \u201cfinally\u201d agrees on even a single concept or property a standard will certainly not be born.\u00a0 Fortunately, social media and change management may combine to address this problem.<\/p>\n Consider, for example, that social media ubiquitously support voting and rating functionality, whether five stars, thumbs up or down, dig it or favorite.\u00a0 We can use this kind of functionality within the wiki to gauge the quality of content.\u00a0 We can also take collective opinions on the need for elaboration.\u00a0 There are other possibilities and details concerning voting and rating.\u00a0 Among them are important details about aggregate opinions versus individual opinions.<\/p>\n In the context of a wiki supporting enterprises, there might be a taxonomy of organizations, groups, and projects, each of which define a community for which voting or rating might be tracked.\u00a0 A community is a collection of individuals where those collections are organized taxonomically.\u00a0 Most wikis have only a single community that anyone can join, including anonymously.\u00a0 Within this community there might be individuals with different roles who can perform certain operations that typical users may not.\u00a0 A more general notion might define communities as requiring permission for an individual or community to join.\u00a0 The privilege to grant membership might be given to those who play an administrative role for the community.\u00a0 And the level of privilege or permission granted to an individual could use the voting and rating functionality described above.<\/p>\n As mentioned above, authority is not a natural phenomenon in open societies, such as the web.\u00a0 Respect may be earned, but authority must be given, not taken.\u00a0 The obvious technique for giving authority is by voting (possibly including a veto mechanism).\u00a0 For example, a community may adopt the policy of extending the role of administrator along with its privileges to the top quartile of rated members.\u00a0 Or, the community might follow a normal nomination and election process.\u00a0 Or the community might elect a president or board of directors to whom it delegates the assignment of roles to community members.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, there are people who will be disruptive or cheat in any system.\u00a0 Unchecked, they will post commercials or vote more than once for or against matters for various reasons.\u00a0 So, it is important to know who is eligible to vote and ensure that there is a most one vote per citizen and that enough citizens vote on specific matters of governance.<\/p>\n It\u2019s nice to have the template of Democracy so well established in the world.\u00a0 Let\u2019s use it.<\/p>\n Now, with wiki democracy and communities, we have the basis for controlling release cycles.\u00a0 Communities can configure their democracy, especially with regard to membership and the roles assigned to members.\u00a0 More specifically, they decide the governance process by which versions are gradually stabilized.\u00a0 They do this by assigning privileges or permissions to individuals, roles, or sub-communities.\u00a0 These privileges or permissions allow them to \u201cfreeze\u201d parts of the ontology.\u00a0 But we cannot really allow the wiki (or its ontology) to be frozen.\u00a0 Rather, we mark particular versions of parts of the ontology as being frozen with respect to a target release for our community.\u00a0 Then, when we have frozen all parts of the ontology that our community needs in its ontology, we extract those versions into a release.\u00a0 Other communities are unaffected by our release cycle.<\/p>\n The wiki might even show a community view of its content.\u00a0 That is, it might show the versions of the ontology (and related wiki content) that is consistent with a community view.\u00a0 Two different individuals might see two distinct views for the same pages.\u00a0 Each might see the version of content that was frozen for their next release or the current content for parts that are not frozen for their community.<\/p>\n The careful IT reader might at this point be wondering about forks and other change management functionality.\u00a0 I do not want to try to address such issues here, but I would welcome your comments and suggestions, especially if you think merges are important.\u00a0 I would argue that forks are to be avoided.\u00a0 They might be frozen for the practical reasons described here, but we need individual communities to converge with the entire community over time.<\/p>\n As the enterprise \u2013worthy ontology underlying the collaborative platform grows and matures the electorate will inevitably demand more stability in what will become the core or upper ontology common to most enterprises.\u00a0 Perhaps an amendment to the constitution will be offered and adopted by super-majority.\u00a0 And a new community will form at the top of the taxonomy with permission to govern aspects and versions of parts of the ontology delegated to it by the electorate.\u00a0 When this happens, the chasm will have been crossed.\u00a0 Or, perhaps the wiki would start with such a board of directors acting as a senate or superior court, if you will.<\/p>\n (See bureaucrats<\/a> and recent elections<\/a> at Wikipedia for further insight on practices and possibilities.)<\/p>\n The bureaucracy will want to effectively freeze certain parts of the ontology for all communities other than itself.\u00a0 Even while frozen however, the upper ontology might still receive votes, ratings, and annotations (which is an important and substantial topic in itself).\u00a0 The mechanism for enforcing this is familiar to almost anyone who would use such a wiki: permissions.\u00a0 The typical approach is to map types of users to things they can or cannot do with, to, or on a particular thing (and to support inheritance between things as appropriate).\u00a0 For example, Revelytix supports some of what I have described for communities as well as role-based permissions in Knoodl<\/a>, its semantic wiki.<\/p>\n As the modifications to the content concerning a part of the ontology diminish, it is either becoming less relevant or more stable.\u00a0 Voting or rating can determine which.\u00a0 Combined with voting and rating information, version control helps identify parts of the ontology that are (close to being) ready for inclusion in a \u201cfrozen\u201d version.<\/p>\n On the other hand, volatility in votes, ratings, and versions indicates potential controversy.\u00a0 Wiki democracy can govern controversy.\u00a0 For example, the electorate can dictate or delegate the definition of policies concerning limits and resolution of controversy.<\/p>\n More practically, if membership in the wiki is limited to people with a vested interest in the emergent and continuous use of the resulting ontology, such as by authentication and other policies, such as nomination and formal acceptance, many of the problems experienced by Wikipedia can be effectively eliminated.<\/p>\n Both of these approaches are becoming increasing common in popular wikis.<\/p>\n Social media demonstrate a variety of techniques for gauging authority, whether globally or per community, generally using voting and rating, but in some cases more objectively.\u00a0 In addition, communities, particularly where they correspond to organizations, may explicitly delegate authority concerning their operations without \u201cresorting\u201d to democracy.\u00a0 The wiki should support both kinds of authority, but it can leverage the former (within or across communities) in gauging the quality of content or to resolve controversy.<\/p>\n With appropriate views of the ontology, people can see what parts of the ontology have many positive or negative votes or ratings filtered by community and level of authority and ranked by volatility.\u00a0 Additional criteria that may help assess the stability and adequacy of ontological knowledge (e.g., concepts, whether categories, collections, or individuals, and properties) are certainly possible and we solicit your ideas and suggestions.<\/p>\n Our interest is in deriving enterprise benefits.\u00a0 We believe that semantics offers significant benefits within enterprises.\u00a0 These are most widely recognized in the areas of data governance and integration but will become increasingly relevant in business process management, enterprise knowledge management, and policy automation.\u00a0 And we are looking forward to leveraging increased understanding of enterprise objectives<\/a>, in business intelligence and enterprise performance management<\/a> (e.g., leveraging XBRL for CFOs).<\/p>\n Enterprises who define their business processes, policies, and objectives semantically want their business process models (BPMN), their semantics of business vocabulary and rules (SBVR) and business motivation model (BMM) to be closely related to the ontology wiki.\u00a0 In effect, they want a wiki within their firewall that is seamlessly integrated with the extended enterprise ontology wiki. They want control over their contributions to the community.<\/p>\n In the extreme, enterprises want to host their own wiki as inheriting from the version of the external wiki that their community is working with and towards.\u00a0 As they edit their content they want careful control over what will be published to the broader community and what will be retained as proprietary.\u00a0 If there is a firewall between their wiki and the global wiki, they want to ensure that none of their proprietary content penetrates the firewall.<\/p>\n This is an extended effect of permissions that interacts with an inheritance scheme between a taxonomy of two wikis.\u00a0 Although this inheritance can be generalized to support a taxonomy of wikis rooted globally but extended internally, the typical use case is inheritance from one external wiki to one internal wiki.\u00a0 This permissions and inheritance mechanism should support overrides and exclusions such that the enterprise can prefer its own definitions which improve or conflict with the global wiki without disclosing them to the broader community.<\/p>\n Although it does not provide wiki functionality, Collaborative Prot\u00e9g\u00e9 addresses many of the issues discussed above.\u00a0 For example, the following shows Prot\u00e9g\u00e9\u2019s support for an extensible set of annotations. <\/a><\/p>\n Prot\u00e9g\u00e9 uses annotations to encode version information, which is cumbersome but stays within the framework of using an RDF representation.\u00a0 The following shows that even fine-grained constructs, such as annotations, are maintained with author and date\/time information:<\/p>\n![\"FOAF](\"http:\/\/haleyai.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/FOAF-spec-concepts1.jpg\" "\\"FOAF")
<\/p>\nOntologies as standards<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Social semantics<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Wiki communities<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Wiki democracy<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Wiki citizens<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Freeze-free releases<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Bureaucracy<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Permissions<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Convergence<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Authority<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Private Content<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Collaborative Protege<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/protegewiki.stanford.edu\/images\/a\/aa\/CollabProtege_ChaoToDo.png "\\"Collaborative")
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![\"\"](\"http:\/\/protegewiki.stanford.edu\/images\/7\/72\/CollabProtege_TodoType.png\" "\\"Collaborative")
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