Wednesday, 5/23/2007
8:00 AM - 9:00 AM
Level: Technical - Introductory

The world of data modeling and database design has developed over nearly 40 years within the information technology industry. The world of semantics and ontologies has developed over about 2500 years within the worlds of philosophy, linguistics, and more recently, artificial intelligence. The time has finally come to bring these worlds together. This presentation is an attempt to take the first steps towards doing that. The presentation will describe data modeling in its various forms and use an example to show the relationships between its concepts and those of the ontology language OWL. Covered will be the relationships between entity classes and OWL classes, attributes and datatype properties, and relationships and object properties. This will include a discussion of taxonomies and alternative classification approaches. The presentation will focus on both the similarities and the fundamental differences between the two approaches.

A veteran of the Information Industry since the days of punched cards, paper tape, and teletype machines, Dave Hay has been producing data models to support strategic information planning and requirements planning for over twenty years. He has worked in a variety of industries, including, among others, power generation, clinical pharmaceutical research, oil refining, banking, and broadcast. He is President of Essential Strategies, Inc., a consulting firm dedicated to helping clients define corporate information architecture, identify requirements, and plan strategies for the implementation of new systems.