Index Is Important. Yes, Indexing.
March 8, 2017
I read “Ontologies: Practical Applications.” The main idea in the write up is that indexing is important. Now indexing is labeled in different ways today; for example, metadata, entity extraction, concepts, etc. I agree that indexing is important, but the challenge is that most people are happy with tags, keywords, or systems which return a result that has made a high percentage of users happy. Maybe semi-happy. Who really knows? Asking about search and content processing system satisfaction returns the same grim news year after year; that is, most users (roughly two thirds) are not thrilled with the tools available to locate information. Not much progress in 50 years it seems.
The write up informs me:
Ontologies are a critical component of the enterprise information architecture. Organizations must be capable of rapidly gathering and interpreting data that provides them with insights, which in turn will give their organization an operational advantage. This is accomplished by developing ontologies that conceptualize the domain clearly, and allows transfer of knowledge between systems.
This seems to mean a classification system which makes sense to those who work in an organization. The challenge which we have encountered over the last half century is that the content and data flowing into an organization changes often rapidly over time. At any one point in time, the information today is not available. The organization sucks in what’s needed and hopes the information access system indexes the new content right away and makes it findable and usable in other software.
That’s the hope anyway.
The reality is that a gap exists between what’s accessible to a person in an organization and what information is being acquired and used by others in the organization. Search fails for most system users because what’s needed now is not indexed or if indexed, the information is not findable.
An ontology is a fancy way of saying that a consultant and software can cook up a classification system and use those terms to index content. Nifty idea, but what about that gap?
This is the killer for most indexing outfits. They make a sale because people are dissatisfied with the current methods of information access. An ontology or some other jazzed up indexing component is sold as the next big thing.
When an ontology, taxonomy, or other solution does not solve the problem, the company grouses about search and cotenant processing again.
Is there a fix? Who knows. But after 50 years in the information access sector, I know that jargon is not an effective way to solve very real problems. Money, know how, and old school methods are needed to make certain technologies deliver useful applications.
Ontologies. Great. Silver bullet. Nah. Practical applications? Nifty concept. Reality is different.
Stephen E Arnold, March 8, 2017
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