[Sigia-l] Taxonomy/Classification IA and Enterprise IA

[Donna M. Fritzsche]

Hi John,
This a great example!  I made some comments below.


At 4:28 AM +0000 3/20/03, John O'Donovan wrote:
>Hi Donna / Chiara,
>
>Providing end to end semantic data models is gaining considerable ground -
>and not just from a technology perspective. Using some examples from the
>broadcast industry you might like to take a look at these:
>
>SMEF
>http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/smef/

I think this quote from their site captures some of the important goals:

"The BBC intends to use the SMEF-DM as a means of integrating key 
information systems; with an appropriate systems architecture, and 
harmonising other related systems as appropriate to improve 
commonality of data. SMEF-DM will also be used to manage data 
definitions across media applications, and embedded metadata 
definitions in media formats."

Specifically the need to "harmonize" data is key.  We will not get 
rid of the legacy application problem for a long time, if ever,  and 
we will be dealing with legacy and various industry structures and 
semantics for a long time.

>
>and
>
>P-Meta
>http://www.ebu.ch/tech_32/tech_t3295.html

I took this quote form there site, I think it is very relevant to the 
earlier Enterprise discussions:

  "The goal is to make a standard metadata exchange framework 
available for adoption in a business-to-business scenario without 
interfering in the internal structures, workflows, and concepts of 
the participating organisations. It offers a way to share the meaning 
of electronic information which is deemed to be necessary or useful 
for the business-to-business exchange of programme-related 
information and content"

>
>
>This is not just about getting data from server to server, it is about
>building metadata models that provide exciting new features by wrapping
>content. In fact these features are becoming a key differentiator in
>Broadcast Enterprise Systems.

It sounds like they are ahead of the curve. Very Impressive!

>The point about namespace is an interesting one. I found when dealing with a
>client in South Africa they had a particular problem with many applications
>and multiple languages (11) and multiple formats (Radio, web, TV) with
>multiple contexts. Namespaces are a serious issue and integrity of
>information from one application to the next is a possible point of massive
>complexity.
>
>The approach I use is to start thinking about higher levels of abstraction.
>Look at the metamodel - the framework that describes the metadata itself and
>ensure that this supports all the semantic concepts. In essence a metamodel
>is the collection of concepts that are the vocabulary with which you are
>talking about a certain domain. Without being concerned with specific
>technologies.
>
>You may also then find yourselves dealing with metameta-models...but I am
>learning not to make big posts here so I'll leave that for now...:) I'll be
>glad to know anyone got this far...
>
>

I think that we are very close to agreeing here.
I think that the application profile/namespace model that I gave a 
link to encompasses the
functionality you are talking about.  It basically provides a toolkit 
of different metamodels that can be mixed and matched depending on 
the application's need.  Each namespace then represents a set of 
metamodels.  It is a very object-oriented approach.  I agree, it is 
preferred that the top level model be the most abstract and that is 
should contain attributes that map across all subdomains when 
possible.

Its hard to hold this conversation without a whiteboard!

Thanks for the interesting conversation!

Donna M. Fritzsche
Partner
Amichi, LLC
Strategic Knowledge Architecure and Information Design
www.amichi.info
donnamarie at amichi.info
(773) 680-2188