1. 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. bcbc Semantic Reasoning and the Buffy Paradigm Bill McDaniel, edp Adobe ® Sr. Scientist 04/26/2005

2. bcbc 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.2 The Buffy Paradigm  First introduced in:  Biological Warfare and the Buffy Paradigm Anthony H. Cordesman, Sept. 29, 2001 Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy Center for Strategic and International Studies  Describes Common Domain Aspects  Uncertain situations  Incomplete knowledge  Counterbalanced by the Buffy Syndrome  An unrealistic search for certainty

3. bcbc 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.3 Characteristics of the BP  High degree of uncertainty  Complexity and chaos are the norm

4. bcbc 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.4 Characteristics of the BP  Bad or uncertain expertise  Inconsistent, erroneous knowledge  Contradictory rules  Priorities change rapidly  Tactical issues overrun strategic thinking  Past performance is not a valid predictor  Each problem must be solved independently

5. bcbc 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.5 Characteristics of the BP  Arcane knowledge is insufficient  Fails to predict the true solution

6. bcbc 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.6 Characteristics of the BP  Certainty is a marker for incorrectness  More certainty implies less accuracy  Strategy collapses in the face of realities  Tactical considerations overrun planning  No success eliminates future problems  The next issue is a transaction away

7. bcbc 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.7 Semantic Web Technologies  RDF  Describes relationships between entities  Provides a reasoning framework  Encapsulates knowledge

8. bcbc 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.8 Semantic Web Technologies  RDF  Suffers from the certainty problem  Does not lend itself to reasoners  Not XML-ish enough for some

9. bcbc 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.9 Semantic Ontologies  OWL  The Web Ontology Language  Provides XML framework for reasoners  Addresses the issues of RDF  Forms a bridge from RDF to XML  Allows disambiguation of vocabularies

10. bcbc 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.10 Semantic issues with XML  Schemas are NOT Ontologies  Ontologies provide names  Schemas and vocabularies do as well But…  Ontologies Represent Knowledge  RDF + OWL = KR  Ontologies allow uncertainty  Can deal with ambiguity  Can drive reasoners with relationships  Can be contained within other ontologies

11. bcbc 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.11 Vocabulary Resolution  Consider two xml schemas  One uses the name ‘zip’  One uses the name ‘zipcode’ zip zipcode

12. bcbc 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.12 Vocabulary Resolution  Ontological view  Provides an is_a relationship  Defines a virtual inference link zip zipcode

13. bcbc 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.13 Ontological Power  Ontologies express rules  Designate inference rules  Make inferencing chains possible  Allow incomplete knowledge  ‘Person’ in ‘Ithaca’ implies  ‘Person’ in ‘New York’  Can resolve ambiguities  A ‘unit’ may be part_of an ‘item’  An ‘item’ may be part_of ‘units’

14. bcbc 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.14 Semantics and Vocabularies  Ontologies can manage vocabularies  Allow for greater flexibility  Lessen need for consistency  Allow XML vocabularies to emerge from database schemas

15. bcbc 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.15 Semantics and the BP  Semantics  Adapt to changing priorities  Represent uncertain knowledge  Allow reasoning with contradictory information  Improve predicatability  Semantics + XML Vocabularies provide an answer to the Buffy Paradigm

16. bcbc 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.16 bcbc Tools for the New Work ™