In my previous post I started the discussion whether we really need a common ontology? To go into detail of this first we need to find out how ontology is helpful in Semantic Web. To understand it better lets take a business case.
There is a Business A, Who deals with Selling Laptop and their Warranty. Business A sells buys the laptop from Business B and Extended Warranty from another Business C. Now lets consider a Customer D places an order for a laptop with extended warranty. In this case Business A needs to do the following:
Now lets assume that the customer has decided to go ahead with the quote and place the order. In such case A has to place an order with B and also an order with C. The payment will be made to A by the customer which in turn will be routed to B and C as per their quote. When the parts arrive at A, it has to be bundled together and shipped to the customer.
This might look like a simple business case but behind the scene there are lots of activities which take place and most of them are too complex to handle. Also there are non-functional requirements like Data Integrity, Security etc come into picture which the users (customer) is not aware of many a times.
Also there are different document formats, types etc come into picture. Each vendor have their own format to accept the messages and the response is also sent back in a pre-defined format as set by the service provider.
Coming back to the topic how the Ontology is going to be helpful in such a scenario. The Ontology can apply to both the Document Type and Semantics.
Documents Types here refer to the structure of the business data that are communicated between the trading partners. Documents Type refers to Concepts, Attributes of concepts and relationship between concepts that are ideally managed by and represented within ontologies. Ontologies can in a very precise manner define as well as manage concepts, attributes and relationships between concepts.
The Semantics here refers to the correct population of attributes with correct domain values. Not every value that an attribute can contain is semantically correct. Like the model number attached to Laptop in the business scenario discussed must belong to a laptop. If a desktop model number is used instead that will be correct as far as syntax is concerned but it will not make any sense in context of laptop.
The Ontology Server can be used to store and access the domain and application concepts, like product name, country where it is available, warranty applicable etc, represented in form of ontologies. Since all these different attributes together must belong to an entity which is not only syntactically correct but also each attribute has some sort of relevance to other attribute (as discussed earlier). For this to happen in reality, they all must have knowledge about each other (at least what matters to them) and the cross-verification must be achievable.
A common ontology server comes handy in such cases as all entities and their attributes belong to one common hierarchy and they can seamlessly integrate and refer to each other.
Note to the readers: I would like to hear from you as what you think about it. If you want to discuss this offline, do not hesitate to drop me an email and I will be happy to discuss it with you.
Until Next Time.. :)
There is a Business A, Who deals with Selling Laptop and their Warranty. Business A sells buys the laptop from Business B and Extended Warranty from another Business C. Now lets consider a Customer D places an order for a laptop with extended warranty. In this case Business A needs to do the following:
- Check with B whether they have particular laptop model in available in Stock.
- Check with C if they offer Extended warranty for the laptop model (selected from B).
- Combine the prices for both the services, Add its own markup to the price and generate final quote for the customer.
Now lets assume that the customer has decided to go ahead with the quote and place the order. In such case A has to place an order with B and also an order with C. The payment will be made to A by the customer which in turn will be routed to B and C as per their quote. When the parts arrive at A, it has to be bundled together and shipped to the customer.
This might look like a simple business case but behind the scene there are lots of activities which take place and most of them are too complex to handle. Also there are non-functional requirements like Data Integrity, Security etc come into picture which the users (customer) is not aware of many a times.
Also there are different document formats, types etc come into picture. Each vendor have their own format to accept the messages and the response is also sent back in a pre-defined format as set by the service provider.
Coming back to the topic how the Ontology is going to be helpful in such a scenario. The Ontology can apply to both the Document Type and Semantics.
Documents Types here refer to the structure of the business data that are communicated between the trading partners. Documents Type refers to Concepts, Attributes of concepts and relationship between concepts that are ideally managed by and represented within ontologies. Ontologies can in a very precise manner define as well as manage concepts, attributes and relationships between concepts.
The Semantics here refers to the correct population of attributes with correct domain values. Not every value that an attribute can contain is semantically correct. Like the model number attached to Laptop in the business scenario discussed must belong to a laptop. If a desktop model number is used instead that will be correct as far as syntax is concerned but it will not make any sense in context of laptop.
The Ontology Server can be used to store and access the domain and application concepts, like product name, country where it is available, warranty applicable etc, represented in form of ontologies. Since all these different attributes together must belong to an entity which is not only syntactically correct but also each attribute has some sort of relevance to other attribute (as discussed earlier). For this to happen in reality, they all must have knowledge about each other (at least what matters to them) and the cross-verification must be achievable.
A common ontology server comes handy in such cases as all entities and their attributes belong to one common hierarchy and they can seamlessly integrate and refer to each other.
Note to the readers: I would like to hear from you as what you think about it. If you want to discuss this offline, do not hesitate to drop me an email and I will be happy to discuss it with you.
Until Next Time.. :)
1 comments:
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