Logging of the updates.
May, 30 2010
Version 4.00 of the finance ontology is published.
Until financing of the ontology development is provided, no more updates are planned.
Mar, 26 2010
I have accepted a new assignment, starting on April, 1.
The reason is, I have to get income since I worked hard the last 9 months on the feasibility of semantic web applications in the finance industry by own funding.
Developments will continue, but progress at a slower rate.
Work in progress today is XBRL-reporting, reconciliation of the different reports in the finance ontology.
This lead to the discovery of a new potential financial collapse discovery see.
Meanwhile, there is a request for XPDL transformation to RDF.
Both are struggling for priority in my time allocation.
Mar, 15 2010
My CV, at many's request is here.
Mar, 5 2010
Hot blog topic: financial crisis measures evaluation
Feb , 23 2010
The hot blog topic: safekeeping accounts.
Feb , 23 2010
The project's mandate has been reviewed the first time.
The result is here.
The result is here.
Feb , 16 2010
A project's mandate on research is published here to call for participants.
Feb , 2 2010
We started a blog, please leave us your comments.
Jan , 27 2010
The page on the ontology documentation is updated with hyperbolic tree documentation on each imported ontology.
Jan , 10 2010
The transformation of knowledge into production processes is tested.
For the finance industry, we choose OpenLink's Virtuoso as integration partner.
The reasons are found here.
Dec , 6 2009
New license conditions for the usage of the finance ontology and the corresponding web pages.
New press releases page.
Oct, 19 2009
New services page
New contact page
Oct, 12 2009
The presentation used on Monday 5th is found here
Oct,2 2009
The agenda for the conference on Monday October 5.
Sep,2 2009
- semantic application 'financial instruments'
Aug, 25 2009
Press release on our conference and training Oct, 5-9 Please check out for reservation
Aug,6 2009:
Our first semantic web application module is born !
July,27 2009:
Announcement of TopQuadrant's conference and training.
June,26 2009:
Version 3.01 of the Finance ontology is documented and published, including:
part of iso 20022
finalization of the federating process
June,11 2009
A frequently asked questions page is added.
May,28 2009
The ontology is being transformed into a federation of ontologies.
The first step in the transformation and the documentation on each ontology is found here.
May,22 2009
We are proud AND very happy to announce the Solution partner agreement signed today with TopQuadrant.
Our service will be adapted accordingly with the planning as per September, 1st 2009.
Knowledge implementation shall thus get a boost with the backing of a professional team and performing products.
Implementation steps of our new service will be published on this site.
May,12 2009:
A knowledge implementation model is published.
The utilities page is created with a newly added utility: OWLSight
April,23 2009:
Evaluation of the business case and the project status and direction
At regular points in time, one have to stand still to evaluate the business case and the project plans.
In a rapidly changing environment as the financial world and the semantic web applications, the intervals in time might be more frequent.
Since a few weeks now, you haven't heard anything from me in the logbook.
The reason is, looking around in the fast moving world, installing, testing and evaluating the new tools which came available is a rather time-consuming occupation.
The results of the evaluations are here.
Evaluation of the business case.
The business case stands, notwithstanding the twisters which went through the financial landscape, nothing (or some cosmetics) changed.
Risk awareness increased but there seems to be no room for investments in product knowledge, production control, risk monitoring. Compared to the industry financial service production remains with higher risks (no tacit raw produce checks, multiple external parties involved in the production, service specification modifications until last minutes before delivery) but less structural control.
The business case pages on the website enter in more detail on the subject.
Anyone being able to help me in pointing to any financial institution on which the risks are not applicable, please contact on info@fadyart.com. I would really be very happy to learn from their experience.
Until then, the criteria set forward in the business case pages, are used as a benchmark for solution providing in a structured way.
As a reminder, the cornerstones of the solution are:
- a generic data model, implying atomized concept descriptions;
- a taxonomy;
- a thesaurus;
accessible by men and machines
We found all 3 and more in ontologies, particularly the owl ontologies.
Evaluation of the ontology building tools
In the field of the semantic web, Protégé is renown as the best tool when large and sophisticated ontologies are concerned.
Protégé is available in 2 flavors, 3.4 version (University of Stanford, Medical informatics) and version 4.0 (University of Manchester).
Last month version 3.4 went from beta to production.
Both versions are in fact completely different in supported owl specification and corresponding engine renderers, user interface, file formats, plug-ins,...
We use both of them and are grasping the latest versions of the developer's desks to offer the newest representation formats.
The comparison with other tools shows the choice remains the top in his kind.
Evaluation of the format of the Finance ontology.
The file-format is .owl
The contents format is OWL/XML but an export to RDF/XML can be obtained on request.
The flavor of owl used is version 2.0 with OWL-DL (Description Logics) limitation so that automated intelligence can be derived from the concepts and their properties.
There is no other more expressive language.
Evaluation of the used reasoners.
The reasoners against which coherence is checked are Pellet 1.5 and FaCT++.
Both are still the standards in their field.
Evaluation of the ontology representation tools
These tools are utmost important for the acceptance of the ontology techniques by the user community.
We cannot expect every knowledge worker becomes an ontology engineer.
The graphical representation tools
We cannot find any free graphical representation tools other than those we show on the website.
We'll come back on the commercial possibilities.
The verbalisation tools
Lots of development took place in this matter.
Looking into these possibilities was most time-consuming.
Controlled languages: ACE (Attempto Controlled English)
Developed by the University of Zurich as a separate project this controlled language has been adopted by the European Union as a recommendation to use for any scientific document.
The syntax has been recommended to be restricted so that the translation of the document to OWL-DL ontologies is automated.
ACE can be used to create ontologies and manage them, even as plug-in to Protégé 4.0
The main usage is one can ask questions in plain (controlled) English and get answers in plain English too with information from the ontology.
That means also the path to automated speech and translation is open.
The ways to operate ACE are: web service or standalone.
For the moment I tested this as web service since the standalone version installation cannot be completed at the moment (software components from the university of Berlin are missing).
Loading the whole analysis as a web service takes more than an hour.
Knowing we have only approximately 20 % at the moment of what the Finance ontology might be, the web service solution is not the one we can promote at the moment.
We'll come back when the service can be installed locally with a higher performance.
Controlled languages: GINSENG, GINO, Querix
Querying the ontology without any learning curve would be possible with these 2 propositions from the university of Zurich.
However, we could not find any implementation of them. After a presentation of the software in 2006 and an interesting presentation on YouTube it seem ably disappeared . We took contact with the university to learn where the tools could be tested and obtained. No answer (yet).
Controlled languages: other languages
We are testing other products too in this field.
However, the language and performance should be found very accessible from a user point of view prior to proposing these solutions.
Commercial knowledge representation tools.
Only the sun comes up for free is well known saying.
We have one package in sight, linked to ontologies with integrated knowledge acquisition and representation tools. We had to ask for approval to test it and wait for their answer.
Evaluation of the ontology topology against the business case
The ontology shall include ISO 20022 (UNIFI) messages as value partition referenced by the processes and procedures.
The advantages are:
- best possible attributes (properties) to the concepts: the providers of the standards are leaders in the competence fields
- easy acquisition of xml data in the ontology database back-end
- physical data model shall be compatible to the conceptual one for each financial institution adopting the standard
Although it is an open standard, we took contact with the ISO20022 consortium to check their wishes and to check wether there is no existing ontology yet. No answer (yet).
The topology of the ontology will be more distributed: iso20022.owl shall become a complete separate ontology with separate ontologies linked. These ontologies represent the messages. The messages consist of redundant blocks which will be separated like the normalization processes in the entity/relationship world would.
Tests have already been performed in this field with drawbacks on some graphical representation methods of the taxonomy.
The producers of the tools have been contacted offering the possibility to adapt their programming.
The frequency of update of the website might lower in the next period but I do not expect it to fall below 1/month.
All comments are welcome.
April,2 2009:
New version (3.00) of the finance ontology is published: process and procedure on client acceptance.
First time process and procedure publication.
March, 20 2009:
New version (2.02) of the finance ontology is published.
Updates of many pages.
March, 15 2009:
David Decraene released a new version of his jOWL browser.
The high performance can be judged here.
March, 5 2009:
The pages on the ontology and business case are renewed.
February, 26 2009:
Reasons for the website.
The link with the financial crisis is developed on this page.
February, 19 2009:
Version 2.01 of the finance ontology is published: referential data.
February, 6 2009:
A new version of the treebolic browser is installed.
The ontology page is adapted accordingly.
January, 25 2009
Treebolic browser is the new browsing method of the ontology.
One need Java version 6 or higher first to use the browser.
January, 20 2009:
January, 18 2009:
Including the external risk monitoring.
January, 7 of 2009:
December, 29 of 2008
Version 1.02: credit rating agencies.
Other enhancements of the ontology and of the lexicon
December, 21 of 2008
Version 1.01 of the ontology: financial instruments enlarged with:
ISO country codes, ISO currency codes, ISO market codes and ISIC activity codes.
Week 49 of 2008
We are proud to publish the first version of the Finance ontology.
Most of the work of the wharf "Financial instruments" is included.
More will follow in a few more builds.
Eager to start the second wharf and I must remember to write a comprehensive manual on how to read and query the ontology too !
A modern site wouldn't be a luxury neither.
Week 48 of 2008
Two ontology-browsers added.
Week 46 of 2008
Rearrangement of the website.
Week 45 of 2008
Presentation on the reasons for an ontology
Week 44 of 2008
New page on the usage of the Finance ontology browser page.
Week 42 of 2008
New page allows browsing the Finance ontology (thanks to help from David Decraene).
Week 41 of 2008
New page on perfect documentation
Week 28 of 2008
New page on the thesaurus
Contents and update action plan for data modelling
Week 25 of 2008:
Update Pages on datamodelling and documentation
Week 18 of 2008:
Pages on datamodelling and documentation
Week 15 of 2008:
Restructuration of the pages
May, 30 2010
Version 4.00 of the finance ontology is published.
Until financing of the ontology development is provided, no more updates are planned.
Latest news
Homepage: http://www.fadyart.com Contact: info(a)fadyart.com
The finance ontology and the website pages of Eddy Vanderlinden are licensed according
Creative Commons Attribution-Share alike 2.0 Belgium license.