RE: Faceted Classification and Data Warehouses, etc.

I also began my "faceted classification and analysis" as a financial
manager.  I then moved into CIO roles.  From the early 80's I've used the
following facets in a container>component relationship, which provides what
I've discovered to be highly consistent orthogonal relations.  Note that
each of these facets provides the hierarchical/taxonomic structure expected
by faceted classification, while the fixed container>component relations
provide the orthogonal associations expected of an ontology.  By using my
approach, I have the benefits of taxonomies, semantic models, and ontologies
in one unfragmented data store - in essence, a datawarehouse combined with a
knowledge base.

The facets and relations are:

Location > Organization > Organization Unit > Function > Process > Resource.

Note that requirements for resources, and matching access control locks and
keys, are defined by linking up appropriate entries from the faceted
hierarchies.

I've used this approach with several U.S. government organizations and
projects in enterprise engineering and architecture projects.  My
methodology for this is available under the Creative Commons license at
http://one-world-is.com/beam.  I call my approach "GEM" for general
enterprise management, which fits nicely with "facets".  (Note that my web
server is faulting on me at this time, so I'm in the process of rehosting my
site.  It will take a few days.)



------------------------------------
One World Information System
Roy Roebuck
Enterprise Engineer
[email protected]
10675 Myrtle Oak Ct
Burke, VA 22015
tel: 703-598-2351
mobile: 703-598-2351
http://one-world-is.com
------------------------------------

-----Original Message-----
From: John OGorman [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2004 3:12 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [facetedclassification] Faceted Classification and Data Warehouses,
etc.



The more I look into this approach to managing content and data on 
web sites, the more I am reminded of a method I used to employ for 
reporting financial information.

To build comprehensive views of financial activity - on both sides of 
the ledger - we used to take categories of expenses, for example, and 
find ways of creating 'drill down' views. For an academic institution 
we would start with a campus location, then embed expense categories, 
program, year of study, student status, etc. so deans and 
administrators could look at different variables (facets?) of the 
total expenditures for any of the active campuses.

It occurs to me now that the problems we had doing that successfully 
involved a lack of orthogonality (as I understand it) in the 
categories. If we chose overlapping (non-orthogonal) categories, the 
expense amount would repeat in two different places, throwing the 
total in our reports out of balance with the general ledger total. 

One of the prerequisites for doing the reports was that each account 
had to have all of the properties used in the drill down, otherwise 
we would get a similar situation: the totals wouldn't balance. 

Does anyone else have a similar experience, or care to comment on 
this observation?









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