Building an ontology using BFO was a bit tricky. It takes some time to get one’s head around the way BFO models the world For example, the distinct difference between information and its representation (as in, the same information could be contained in a both a word processing document and a slide presentation). Some of this is made a little easier by using BFO as an upper-level ontology and using a mid-level ontology such as the Common Core Ontologies being developed for use by the US Army. (See this paper for a discussion of their application.)

But getting my head wrapped around how BFO represents information wasn’t the half of it.

Once I had what I believed was a good ontology in place, meaning that it passed the consistency checks of at least one reasoner (such as Fact++ or Pellet), I needed to add data to it. That’s where the real fun began. I have several tens of thousands of records representing ships and position information reports that need to be converted from the existing concept-based ontology into the BFO-based version (perhaps hundreds of thousands, I haven’t really counted).

To do the conversion, I’m using the Manchester OWL API. It’s robust and pretty straightforward, and I’ve used if for other projects, so it was a natural choice for me. (For anyone who objects that a Java application is awfully heavy for doing what is essentially text conversion, you’re probably right. But I’m not a real programmer; I only impersonate one from time to time when it’s necessary for a given task. And I’ve got deadlines to meet for the work project that I’m doing this for, so I went with what I know.)

Actually adding the data revealed several inconsistencies in my ontology, all centered around that very explicit distinction between information and its representation. Thankfully, a colleague who is doing much of the development work on the Common Core Ontologies was able to help me out.

I’ve managed to update all of the data about individual ships to the new ontology; now I need to update the position information.

Recently at work I learned of an initiative called the Basic Formal Ontology. It’s an interesting take on ontology development that has captured my interest, at least for the moment.

When I learned ontology development, it took a concept-centric approach. That is, the ontology developer created classes that represented concepts of interest in the domain being modeled, created data properties that define the attributes of each class, and created object properties that describe the relationships between classes.  To take a simple example, an ontology describing Navy ships might be broken down into combatant and noncombatant classes, and this is perfectly valid provided it meets the needs of the ontology developer and the eventual system user.

In contrast, BFO takes a very different approach. BFO is focused on modeling reality–that is, those things that objectively exist in time and space. If one wanted to model Navy ships, then the model might include watercraft or ship classes, but it would not include terms like “combatant” as classes because “combatant” is a role that a ship assumes, it is not a thing in and of itself.

It’s certainly a different way of looking at ontologies. Much of this is because the developer of BFO, Dr. Barry Smith, is a philosopher by trade and training, and not an information systems specialist. He runs the National Center for Ontological Research (NCOR), which is a project of State University of New York at Buffalo. He specifically developed BFO to support scientific research, hence the focus on modeling reality instead of someone’s perception of a particular domain.

I’m not 100% certain that BFO is a better way than concept-based ontologies. But I think I see some intriguing possibilities, so I’m going to dig into it and see how things go. BFO has a lot of traction within the biomedical community, so that tells me someone thinks it has value. It’s a bit tricky to wrap one’s head around it at first, but now that I’m getting used to it I think I’m on the verge of actually being productive with it. An invaluable resource in understanding the BFO approach to ontology development is the book Building Ontologies with Basic Formal Ontology from MIT Press.

I guess I’ll see if BFO is worth the trouble or not.

After many discussions with my advisor and several iterations, I have developed a Quality of Service (QoS) model for describing the desired QoS (when the model is applied to a business process) and the promised QoS (when applied to an individual service description).

It’s based on a semantic QoS model developed by researchers at INRIA, a French research institute. They spelled out a good framework for capturing QoS elements, but I needed to extend it somewhat for my purposes. For instance, they didn’t apply it to business process models, and they did not contemplate non-web services as part of their service offerings.

Now all I need to do is code up some examples and run some experiments. All I need for that is time, and that’s in pretty short supply these days.

Way back when, I submitted a paper to the 2012 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM  2012) conference. The major reason for this is that my advisor was on the organizing committee, and he wanted to go to Turkey. I submitted the paper, and while it was not accepted to the main conference, it was accepted to the First International Workshop on Semantic Social Network Analysis and Design (SSNAD). My advisor was invited to give the keynote presentation for the workshop and agreed to present our paper. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, my advisor came down with a stomach virus and was not able to attend the workshop in person. But the workshop organizers graciously agreed to allow him to present his keynote by Skype. At the same time, they agreed to allow me to present our paper the same way. My advisor created a Camtasia movie of his keynote in case the Skype connection wasn’t adequate.The downside is that the workshop is at 1:30 PM Istanbul time, which equates to 6:30 AM Sunday for those of us on the eastern seaboard of the US. I’m listening to teh keynote as I write this.

Skype is working, but they can’t get the audio to work on the Istanbul end. But they have established a good audio connection. The Camtasia move has come in handy. I’m not sure how my presentation will go, but I supposed we’ll see. If nothing else, it will be an interesting experience.

The SRII conference is over and I’m headed back east. In only wish the airports in Virginia were open all night so I didn’t have to wait for the redeye to make it home. I wouldn’t mind landing at 1AM. If the research forum had been Thursday I’d already be home.

The conference went well. Vint Cerf wasn’t there in person but sent a short video message. Some of the other speakers were excellent, as were some of the panels. My only real complaint is the fact that so many supposedly intelligent people can’t tell time. If you’re scheduled to speak for 20 minutes and your talk runs for 30 minutes, you need to get your act together and adjust your spiel to fit within the allotted time. It’s damned inconsiderate to the other speakers, and it makes it very difficult for the audience to coordinate other responsibilities and still see the items that are of interest to them. And there’s just no excuse for the conference organizers to start a given day’s proceedings late. Maybe I just spent too much time in the Corps and expecting people to be on time is asking for too much.

The highlight of the whole thing for me was probably a talk on emerging research trends. The speaker mentioned the idea of  “everything as a service,” which included people. That reinforced my feeling that my research into a common metamodel for describing such any type of service in a fashion comparable to a web service is valuable.

It did get a chance to talk to some other researchers working on related work, and that’s always a good thing. But it will be even better to get back home to the family.

The Service Research and Innovation Institute’s Global Conference has finally arrived. I decided to skip all the face-to-face chapter meetings and Significant Special Interest Group meetings, so I used the first day of the conference as a travel day. The real fun should start today. They got Vint Cerf as the opening keynote speaker, so they’ve got to have something on the ball.

The research forum is on Friday. It’s from 11:00-1:00, so there’s no way I can be done early enough to take a flight home earlier than the redeye. An old friend is flying into town with his new fiancee Friday night, but I guess he’ll have to hang out with my wife and kids until early Saturday morning. Oh, well, I can spend the extra time working on the draft of my dissertation. I haven’t done nearly as much on that as I should have, but I am making progress.

I learned yesterday that the paper I submitted to the ASONAM 2012 conference didn’t get accepted. While that’s disappointing, I wasn’t really looking forward to the expense of going to Turkey for the conference. It would have been a great experience, but not cheap.

On the brighter side, I met with the remaining member of my committee and got a lot of positive feedback, so I’m still on track with my research. Plus, I’ve had a chance to update my paper for the SRII Global Conference. Once I get my advisor’s OK on it (he’s also my co-author), I can submit that and concentrate on the longer paper he wanted me to work on.

Tomorrow I will be presenting the paper I submitted to the DGSS 2012 workshop. It’s a poster presentation, which will be a new thing for me. I’ve done plenty of slide presentations in all manner of venues, but I haven’t done a poster presentation. Luckily, I have a friend who owns a plotter and can print the poster for me; that’s saving me a bundle. Now all I need to do is tell a good story.

In the meantime, my advisor wants me to submit a paper to the 2012 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining in Istanbul. It should be similar to the one I just submitted to the SRII Global Conference, so that will help get it started. I’m overdue getting him an outline, but that’s mostly a matter of typing; I already have it drafted. I guess I’d better get to work.

I’m mostly done with the paper I was working on for the Annual SRII Global Conference. Now I’m just waiting for comments from my advisor before I submit it. It had been due on February 29, but early on the 28th they announced the deadline was being extended by popular request. The new deadline is March 15. So for now, I’ve set the paper aside for a few days. I’ll review it again after it’s mellowed for a little while. I find it helpful to walk away from something for a little while and then re-read it after being away from it. I often find new things that I didn’t see earlier, and the end result is a better product.

Now I’m on the hunt for another publishing opportunity. One more in the bag (assuming the SRII paper gets accepted) and I should be in a position to put my dissertation together and start working on my defense. In the meantime, I’ve got to prepare my poster presentation for the DGSS workshop on April 1st.