Mike Bennett FOIS – JOWO Cape Town, South Africa September 2018 Hypercube Ltd. Conceptual Ontology Engineering Tutorial Session 4: Top Level Ontologies Mike Bennett FOIS – JOWO Cape Town, South Africa September 2018

Session 4: Top Level Ontology Partitioning Deep Dives Contextually defined things ‘Relatives’ Things that happen versus things that just are ‘Continuant’ and ‘Occurrent’ ‘Endurant’ and ‘Perdurant’

Business Rationale for Context in Ontology

Context-dependent data stores Business Entity Integration issues arise from: perspective / context terminology mismatch … CRM1 CRM2 CRM3 CRMn Integration issues

Context-dependent data stores Bank perspective on Customer pers. view pers. view pers. view pers. view Business Entity Integration issues arise from: perspective / context terminology mismatch … CRM1 CRM2 CRM3 CRMn Integration issues

… What is the Context? Bank Legal Person There are various points at which the bank interacts with a given person (customer for various products) … CRM1 CRM2 CRM3 CRMn Legal Person

Contextual and Non-contextual Data

Aligning Business Glossary and Data Elements Analysis of a representative set of terms in a bank business glossary and accompanying data dictionary. Terms like ‘Country’ are defined in the context in which they are used, for example country of domicile, risk etc. Meanwhile data elements need the context of class, class hierarchy in data models to determine semantics. ONTOLOGY Contexts: Time Role / Relationship Records / history etc. Business concept context Data element context Business Glossary Data Model trace Country A self-governing geopolitical unit that is recognized as a country by the United Nations Country of Incorporation This term refers to country in which a corporation is legally registered for operations. This term is applicable to corporate entities only. XYZ: Registered Address Country Country of Birth The country which customer documentation identifies as country of birth of the customer. This term refers to individuals only. PQR: Customer Birth place Country of Residence The country where the customer declared he / she resides . This attribute refers to individuals only. PQR: Customer Domicile Country Code Domicile Country This term refers to the country where the company operates for its primary operations. This term is applicable to corporate entities only XYZ: Customer Domicile Country Code Country Code This is a 2-3 digit standard used to refer to a country, where the code is applicable to county of birth, county of residence, etc. ISO 3166 Country Code Country of Risk This term refers to the country of risk for a customer's exposure with the Bank. This may be related to the currency of transaction or to location of a transaction or payee. This is applicable to corporations of individuals. XYZ: Customer Risk Country Code PQR: Customer Collateral Country Code Business Glossary Details

Customer Relationships Current State To make data reusable the contexts implicit in application siloes must be made explicit. Consider a set of applications for relationships between the bank and some party. Each silo combines relationship-specific data, entity data and historical records of the product or loan application. Bank Data Siloes CRM2 CRM1 CRMn There are various points at which the bank interacts with a given person (customer for various products) First name Family name Customer ID Drawdown date Credit rating Address Country of Birth Full name Customer ID Purchase date Phone Address Line 1 … City Country Name Customer ID Date of Birth Purchase date Phone Address Line 1 … Country of Collateral Legal Person

Customer Relationships Data: Future State The Ontology makes implicit contexts explicit. It provides contextual semantics, distinguishing concepts specific to relationships, historical records (e.g. loan applications), current information for entities, and others. This is independent of the deployment benefits of semantic technology. FIBO ONTOLOGY Contexts: Time Role / Relationship Records / history etc. Purchase date Current date Ontology provides the context for each kind of data Relationship (context) specific data Customer ID Purchase history Contact Phone Customer ID Drawdown date Payment history Customer ID Purchase date Country of collateral Full name Customer ID Purchase date Application Credit rating Phone Address Line 1 … City Country of Domicile Non context specific data becomes real-time entity data Entity Data Address Records: Loan application data First name Family name Current Credit rating Date of Birth Home Phone Country of Birth Address Line 1 .. Address line n City State Country Independent entity data

Approaches to Context Context as a Class Kinds of Context Mediating Thing partition Kinds of Context Who What When Where hoW Why? Everything as Context

Context as a Class Mediating Thing partition Independent Thing Identified by properties intrinsic to the thing Properties that do not depend on context Relative Thing Identified by properties of the thing in a given context Mediating Thing is the context Leads to a hierarchy of kinds of context

Thermopylae

Greeks

Persians Depiction of the "Susian guards" from the Palace of Darius I in Susa. Their garments match the description of the Immortals by ancient authors.

Persian Immortals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortals_(Achaemenid_Empire) The Immortals (from the Greek Ἀθάνατοι Athánatoi) also known as the Persian Immortals or Persian Warriors was the name given by Herodotus to an elite heavily-armed infantry unit of 10,000 soldiers in the army of the Achaemenid Empire. This force performed the dual roles of both Imperial Guard and standing army. The force consisted mainly of Persians, but also included Medes and Elamites.  The Immortals played an important role in Cambyses II's conquest of Egypt in 525 BC and Darius I's invasion of India's smaller western frontier kingdoms (western Punjab and Sindh, now in Pakistan) and Scythia in 520 BC and 513 BC. Immortals participated in the Battle of Thermopylae 480 BC and were amongst the Persian occupation troops in Greece in 479 BC under Mardonius.[2]

The Persian Immortal Greeks Persian Immortal Thermopylae Darius Adam Xerxes Pahlavi Etc. etc.

Relatively Defined Entity The Persian Immortal Viewer Relatively Defined Entity Context Greeks Persian Immortal Thermopylae played by played by played by Darius Adam Xerxes Pahlavi Etc. etc. Independent Entities

Found on Facebook…

What to do about that Tomato? Tomato as a thing As a thing, it’s a kind of fruit Tomato as something you put in a salad As a salad ingredient you would put it in a green salad not a fruit salad Salad as a Thing A salad is a dish made by combining ingredients without further processing (cooking etc.) after you’ve combined them Ingredients may be prepared beforehand e.g. by chopping, or they may not Ingredients are ingredients – that’s a concept too!

Salad ingredients Salad Ingredient Salad Fruit salad ingredient Green salad Mixed salad has Salad Ingredient Fruit salad ingredient Green salad ingredient

Green Salad Ingredient Tomato in Salad Fruit Salad Is a Is a Tomato Green Salad Takes the form of may be used as has ingredient Green Salad Ingredient

Mixing it Up Pizza and Wine ontologies are fine tuned for the application Suppose we want to talk about food and drink more generally? How would these work together? Example application: I haz cheeze What can I do with it?

The Language of Food Cheese is starting to appear in more than one place Cheese topping on the pizza Cheese salad We may also anticipate future uses of our food language to talk about burgers, garlic bread and so on Grapes feature in wine and may also appear in some salad Are we any closer to not putting that tomato in the fruit salad?

Generalization and Abstraction A thought experiment: What sort of Thing is Pizza base? What sort of Thing is Cheese Topping? What sort of thing is Pinot Gris? What sort of thing is 2007? What sort of thing is the Napa Valley? A Thought Experiment What sort of thing is lettuce? What sort of thing is broccoli? What sort of thing is cheese? What sort of thing is a tomato?

Ontological Analysis: 2 Questions What sort of thing is this? What distinguishes it from other things?

Ontological Analysis: 2 Questions What sort of thing is this? Gives a “Taxonomy” of things ordered by type What distinguishes it from other things? Extends the taxonomy to an “Ontology” Things in a classification hierarchy, distinguished by properties

Thinking about Meanings There is a distinction between cheese used as a topping and cheese as cheese How do we deal with this? Let’s start simple: What sort of thing is “cheese topping”? It’s a topping What sort of thing is a topping? It’s an ingredient So cheese topping is a kind of ingredient, that is something which forms one of the constituents of some prepared dish

The Ancients… “All that is in Heaven and Earth…” … falls into one of three “buckets” or top level categories: A thing in itself A thing defined with reference to some specific context The context which allows us to define something in (2)

The Ancients… “All that is in Heaven and Earth…” … falls into one of three “buckets” or top level categories: A thing in itself Foodstuff e.g. cheese, grape A thing defined with reference to some specific context Ingredient e.g. topping, varietal The context which allows us to define something in (2) Recipe

The Contextual Partitions Independent Thing Relative Thing Mediating Thing

The Contextual Lattice Independent Thing The Thing in Itself Relative Thing Something defined specifically to some context e.g. role Mediating Thing The context which brings independent things together in some role or function

The Contextual Lattice Independent Thing The Thing in Itself Person, cheese, tomato, grape, business Relative Thing Something defined specifically to some context e.g. role Customer, ingredient, Contract party Mediating Thing The context which brings independent things together in some role or function Sales, salad, contractual agreement

This requires careful thought… Let’s think about some examples Pizza: toppings tend to be simple foodstuffs The fact they are listed in the context of a pizza is only clear from the context itself; Wine: The word “varietal” clearly defines a kind of grape in the context of a given wine So that’s easy. Varietal gives us a convenient label for kinds of grape used in the making of a given wine This sits in a separate taxonomic hierarchy to kinds of grape Concord is a grape and pinot noir is a grape Pinot noir is also the name of a varietal that is a grape as used in the making of some wine

Labels and Meanings Lesson: the labels won’t always match our neat scheme We need to keep a clear head about the intended meanings of something which might have the same label as something under a different partition Especially when the available data assumes a knowledge of the application context Context isn’t automatically communicated to the computer Sometimes (as in varietal) there will be some common label to help us Labeling: we can make this easier to follow by appending the name varietal” after the grape name PinotNoirVarietal, CarmenereVarietal Even if the available data is not labeled this way, use it as a mental exercise to determine which partition you are talking about

Taking this to Cheese Cheese topping is a kind of topping which is a kind of ingredient Blue cheese topping is a kind of cheese topping Cheese is a kind of dairy product Blue cheese is a kind of cheese By putting the topping into the Relative Thing partition we can distinguish these The labels won’t always help Blue cheese as a kind of cheese Blue Cheese as a kind of cheese topping Blue Cheese as a kind of salad dressing Labeling may help: append the parent label (“Topping”) to concepts in that partition i.e. SomethingTopping Do this in the data as well if you can If not, say it out loud and see if still means what you thought it meant!

What does the Data Look Like? What would be an example piece of instance data for a “Relative Thing”? We tend to think of data in terms of independent things. However Some data sources are implicitly describing the relative thing anyway For example a customer database has “Customer” This is like “Varietal” – the label makes the contextual use clear Test is whether the data includes properties which are specific to that thing only as used in that context Salami as an independent thing may or may not be sliced Salami as a pizza topping is sliced precisely because it is to be used as a pizza topping; This is a fact about the ingredient of salami in the context of its use as a pizza topping

What does the Data Look Like? Wine A set of example data for wine might be easy. It may include terms like: Estate: Williams Estate Region: Napa Valley Varietal: Pinot Noir Vintage: 2007 Here the varietal refers to a grape specifically in terms of its use in wine – so you can map this data directly to the Relative Thing So is Vintage – it’s not just a year it’s the year of that wine’s production Wine mostly has labels which describe relative things Other data might now Remember: labels don’t determine the meaning, the partitions do!

The Test for Relativity Data created for a single application e.g. customer data, may combine assertions about a class both as thing in itself and in the context of the application Customer Given Name Customer Contact for Correspondence For each assertion: Does this apply to the thing regardless of the context? Name, address, company registration number Does this apply to the thing in the specific business context only Contact for correspondence (about this product) Credit history / payment history with supplier

How to Tag Data Semantically It is not so much a matter of looking for data which is instance data of some relative thing Rather, it’s case of determining, for the data which you have, how to tag it semantically For each item of data which is available, ask whether it is framed in the context of some identifiable Mediating Thing, or if it’s a fact about the thing as a whole Some data sources may not have made this distinction so you may end up tagging different bits of data as being independent versus relative things There is unlikely to be data about the Mediating Thing. Rather this is likely to be the name of the application or use case

Touching Base What we have so far: What about Mediating Thing? You can cross reference between different contexts more effectively if the things which are defined in a context specific way are arranged in a separate partition called Relative Thing Relative things include ingredients (e.g. of pizza and other food); constituents / ingredients of wine, of salad and so on They also include things like parties to an agreement, the actor who performs some role, the vendor or supplier in a customer / supplier relationship and so on. You need to tag the data semantically according to what it really means, not simply as some kind of Independent Thing Sometimes the existing data element labels are a clue, sometimes you have to think about it What about Mediating Thing?

What about Mediating Thing? This requires more careful thought What is the context that brings pizza base and pizza topping together into a pizza? The Pizza? But pizza is an Independent Thing? You can buy it, sell it, poke it with a stick, eat it and so on It can itself perform some role e.g. as part of a feast, as stock and so on. So what then is the Mediating Thing? This would be the Pizza Recipe. The recipe brings two or more independent things together Pizza Base: a kind of bread; Various chopped or grated things e.g. Salami, cheeses, broccoli etc. When these are brought together into the context of the pizza recipe, they perform the roles of base or topping The Pizza is an independent thing produced by this process

Pizza Mediating Thing This is the recipe. A recipe brings together kinds of thing, which are referred to in the context of the recipe, as ingredients The ingredients have recipe-specific properties, like how thinly they are sliced, which do not apply to the thing in and of itself If the label “Ingredient” sounds sensible appended to the name of some foodstuff, it’s a relative thing This is defined in the context of “Recipe” In the context of a recipe we call something an ingredient Without a recipe there can be no ingredients

Winemaking Winemaking brings various things together and carries out various processes Fermentation is a process (also a thing-in-itself, a temporal one) Grape is a thing-in-itself Varietal is the grape as used in this process to make this wine Terroir is the land in which these grapes have been grown Vintage is the year in which this wine was bottled Estate is the (independent) place which acted in the role of producer of this wine (winemaker versus location) So Winemaking is the Mediating Thing The various components are independent things The definitions of those items as being components or aspects of wine are the Relative Things.

Wine Mediating Thing Winemaking is the Mediating Thing for wine Grapes have a label which specifically identifies the Relative Things, namely Varietal Other independent things also have winemaking-specific labels Terroir, Estate, Vintage, are relative things Defined in terms of roles played by soil, real estate and even time itself. Again these words only make sense and take these meanings in the context of winemaking

Tomato Knowledge is knowing that Tomato is part of the taxonomy of things that are a fruit Salad is a combination of ingredients which have undergone no further processing other than to be combined and maybe chopped Salad Ingredient is something which you have put into that salad Fruit Salad has salad ingredients which are all kinds of fruit, except tomato and chili Green salad has salad ingredients which may be drawn from a variety of sources (including tomato) Mixed salads may include walnuts, grapes, tomatoes, cheese and so on. It’s up to you. Wisdom is defining the rules about what kinds of foodstuff can be used in the role defined for one or another kind of ingredient. Some flowers or their petals can also serve as a salad ingredient

Why does Any of This Matter? If you can distinguish between something defined according to some specific role, and that thing in and of itself, then You have a common language which a be raged across a broad range of subject matter; The taxonomy is greatly simplified: Instead of having lots of separate kinds of subclasses for lots of to different functions, you have a simple taxonomy Things are taxonomized only according to their intrinsic properties There is a separate taxonomy of things as defined in some context The imposition of Relative Thing and Mediating Thing seem to add complexity, but they take this complexity away from the taxonomy This requires imagination and thought to implement correctly

Why Relative Thing matters The Relative Things have a use when there are things you want to say about something which are only about its application in some specific context Customer: who is the in house contact who handles this customer Ingredient -> Pizza topping: how thinly do I slice it? Varietal: when is it harvested, what are the characteristics it imbues the wine with? None of those are facts about a kind of grape in and of itself

More Mediating Things This requires imagination Examples will help: The Mediating Thing for Pizza was the Recipe The Mediating Thing for Wine was Winemaking What is the mediating thing for contracts and contract parties? What is the mediating thing for the registered address of a company?

Addresses One can refer to an address in terms of its function as follows: Delivery Address Mailing address Headquarters address Registered Address Each of these can be seen as a thing in a role – the independent thing being some street address e.g. 333 Market Street, and the role being delivery etc.

Address Mediating Thing What is the Mediating Thing for each of these? Delivery of Goods (“Goods Inward” or loading bay location) Delivery of mail (by post office or couriers) Where the company has its head office; management of the company Registered address –not so simple… In law, the Registered Address of a company is where you can serve papers on that entity for legal proceedings This relates to the fact that they are a Legal Person.

Registered Address Context There will always be some meaningful context in which to define the Relative Thing (if there is a real Relative Thing in play). So find it. DO NOT come up with some artificial sounding label e.g. “Registration Context” Think about it: what is it in which some kinds of entity are required to register a Registered Address? Whatever that is will be your Mediating Thing

Company Registration What actually happens in the world is that when a given kind of Legal Person is formally registered, several legal requirements come into play: One of these is the legal requirement to provide an address at which papers may be served upon the Legal Person. This is the registered address The specific properties of these may vary from one jurisdiction to another for example in South Africa one may use a PO Box while in most jurisdictions this is expressly forbidden. So the Mediating Thing is “Company Registration” This has a number of specific properties, which vary from one jurisdiction to another Other kinds of address occur in the contexts of delivery, correspondence, corporate management etc.

Financial Industry Contexts Overview EDM-Council/FIBO Foundations Content Team

Other Context Treatments What else can be the kind of thing that is the context for some contextually determined thing (Relative Thing)? Roles (of a thing or person) Function Phases Status

Modeling Treatments The ‘Contextually Defined Thing’ may be modeled in several ways: Simple partitions (Sowa KR Lattice) Rigid v non rigid sortals (OntoUML) Role + layer (GFO Dependent Continuant (BFO) And others The conceptual challenge remains the same but the modeling details may differ Key question: What do the ‘Individuals’ look like?

Individuals: KR Lattice Partitions Individual of type ‘Relative Thing’ E.g. Wells Fargo as Lender to Joe Bloggs Individual types both as independent and relative thing Wells Fargo is Institution AND Lender

OntoUML / SMIF: Roles Roles define what something is for or how it behaves in a certain context, not “what it is”. A “relative thing” A role is a <<Facet Of>> what it can be a role of. An entity can play any number of roles and these roles may change over time. Roles can be contextual and specialize other roles Roles are usually established by relationships 2/5/2019 Threat & Risk

Phases Phases (or states) are classifications of objects over their lifetime. A “Relative thing” Examples: Child, Teenager, Adult or Invoiced, Late, Paid May be combined with other types using unions and intersection (e.g. teenage driver) 2/5/2019 Threat & Risk

Independent: John as a Person Pilots License has a Status has status Current John has a pilot’s license John has sufficient flying hours logged to be current John (as a instance of an Independent Thing) is a pilot

Customer Relationships Current State To make data reusable the contexts implicit in application siloes must be made explicit. Consider a set of applications for relationships between the bank and some party. Each silo combines relationship-specific data, entity data and historical records of the product or loan application. Bank Data Siloes CRM2 CRM1 CRMn There are various points at which the bank interacts with a given person (customer for various products) First name Family name Customer ID Drawdown date Credit rating Address Country of Birth Full name Customer ID Purchase date Phone Address Line 1 … City Country Name Customer ID Date of Birth Purchase date Phone Address Line 1 … Country of Collateral Legal Person

Customer Relationships Data: Future State The Ontology makes implicit contexts explicit. It provides contextual semantics, distinguishing concepts specific to relationships, historical records (e.g. loan applications), current information for entities, and others. This is independent of the deployment benefits of semantic technology. FIBO ONTOLOGY Contexts: Time Role / Relationship Records / history etc. Purchase date Current date Ontology provides the context for each kind of data Relationship (context) specific data Customer ID Purchase history Contact Phone Customer ID Drawdown date Payment history Customer ID Purchase date Country of collateral Full name Customer ID Purchase date Application Credit rating Phone Address Line 1 … City Country of Domicile Non context specific data becomes real-time entity data Entity Data Address Records: Loan application data First name Family name Current Credit rating Date of Birth Home Phone Country of Birth Address Line 1 .. Address line n City State Country Independent entity data

Things that Happen

Continuants and Occurrents. Continuants correspond largely to physical bodies, objects, and particular masses of matter, while occurrents correspond to events, processes, and - perhaps - momentary states. Here, I employ the following distinction: a continuant is constructed as a spatial entity that has all its parts at an instant t, and no spatial parts at any other instant an occurrent is constructed as a temporal entity that has only one part, or that has sequential temporal parts.

Kinds of Occurrents Binary Event Dynamic invariants (predicates over pairs of states) Ends (BMM for states) Plan (prescriptive) Executed Plan Process (prescriptive) Milestone

Endurants and perdurants In contemporary theories of persistence, a persisting entity either endures by having all its parts at any instant; or perdures by having parts at sequential instants. More generally, an endurant has no temporal parts (or, at least, no conceptually distinguishable temporal parts) and thus exists in its entirety at each instant of its existence a perdurant has temporal parts, and is at least temporally extended.

DOLCE

Events (SEP)

Events (sorted) Remember: these are not the labels we will use Ontology is about the concepts

Something which happens Occurrent things Occurrent thing Something which happens (at some time) Definitive Occurrent Occurrence Process Definition Instant, Purposeful Ongoing, Purposeful State Definition of what should happen (repeatable)

Processes and Plans Definitive occurrent things Describing what should happen versus what did happen

Definitive Occurrent Occurrent thing Something which really happens (at some time) Definitive Occurrent Definition of what should happen (repeatable) Descriptive Occurrent Prescriptive Occurrent Historic Occurrent Predictive Occurrent Process Definition Plan Method

Other Occurrent Facets Heterogeneous Homogeneous Occurrent Thing Culminating Occurrent Non Culminating Occurrent Definitive Occurrent Descriptive Occurrent Prescriptive Occurrent Historic Occurrent Predictive Occurrent Process Definition Plan

More Occurrent Facets Occurrent Thing Heterogeneous Homogeneous Culminating Occurrent Non Culminating Occurrent State PurposefulOccurrent Non Purposeful Occurrent Instantaneous Occurrent Ongoing Occurrent

Working Definitions Continuant: Occurrent: Definition: “something which exists and retains its identity across points in time” Explanatory Note: These persist over time even when their constituents alter over time Occurrent: Definition: “something which is defined wholly with reference to time or which consists of one or more things which are defined wholly with reference to time” Explanatory Note: These are extended in time and so are only partly present at any time in which they exist

Occurrent Things Facets Homogeneous / Heterogeneous Continuous / has parts Culminating / non culminating Is the end of something / is ongoing Duration / no duration Ongoing / instant Telic / Atelic With or without some purpose or intention Random / Intentional Causes unknown / caused by agent Prescriptive / Descriptive What should happen / what happened

In English Homogeneous / Heterogeneous Culminating / non culminating Continuous / has parts Culminating / non culminating Is the end of something / is ongoing Duration / no duration Ongoing / instant Telic / Atelic With or without some purpose or intention Random (stochastic) / Intentional Causes unknown / caused by agent Prescriptive / Descriptive What should happen / what happened Dynamic and non dynamic Some of the other facets apply only to dynamic occurrents

The Facets Homogeneous / Heterogeneous Culminating / Not Culminating Continuous / has parts Culminating / Not Culminating Is the end of something / is ongoing Duration / No Duration Ongoing / instant Functional / Non Functional (formerly Telic / Atelic) With or without some function (regardless of whether there’s an intending agent) Intended / Not Intended caused by agent / Causes unknown Prescriptive / Descriptive What should happen / what happened What about hypothetical things and thing that could happen Not in the model just yet: Dynamic and Non Dynamic [State?] Some of the other facets apply only to dynamic occurrents Future conditions effected by other events Deterministic / Not Deterministic Exogenous events in risk analysis – probabilistic / stochastic KEEP THIS

Facet: *geneous

Facet: Culminating

Facet: Prescriptive/Descriptive

Facet: Functional and Purposeful

Facet: Discrete / Continuous

Occurrents Taxonomy

Occurrent Facets – CCM View

What is State? There are two concepts often referenced by the word “State” The state something is in E.g. being red, being in default Per State Transition Diagrams This is occurrent The state itself The state of redness, the state of default This is a continuant thing It is also abstract (does not have concrete members in the world)

What is State?

Why does this Matter? Frame concepts which have a temporal component which are of interest to the business Events, activities States Statuses, prices, other time-variant concepts Provide a basis for ontological modelling of business process This brings the two sides of development (structural and behavioural) into the same conceptual model © Hypercube 2015

Other Labels for Occurrents Binary Event / State transition Dynamic invariants (predicates over pairs of states) Ends (BMM for states) Plan (prescriptive) Executed Plan Process (prescriptive) Milestone

Treatments Ontology scoping Perspective on the ontology or its application Pragmatics Selection of upper ontology partitions Most appropriate Best of breed Best match to usage (realist v idealist etc.) What else?

Lifecycle

Process

Questions? Next: Putting it to work