Re: Alternatives to OWL for linked data?

Hi Axel --

I believe that the Executable English / Internet Business Logic system
covers most, and possibly all, of the requirements that you list.

There's an overview paper [1], and plenty of starter examples such as [2-4]
.

The system is online [5], can be used either from a browser or as part of an
SOA [6], and shared use is free.

Apologies to folks on the list who may have seen this before, and thanks for
comments.

                                   -- Adrian

[1]
www.reengineeringllc.com/A_Wiki_for_Business_Rules_in_Open_Vocabulary_Executable_English.pdf

[2] www.reengineeringllc.com/demo_agents/RDFQueryLangComparison1.agent

[3]www.reengineeringllc.com/demo_agents/OwlTest1.agent

[4]
www.reengineeringllc.com/EnergyIndependence1Video.htm  (Flash video with
audio)

[5] Internet Business Logic
A Wiki and SOA Endpoint for Executable Open Vocabulary English over SQL and
RDF
Online at www.reengineeringllc.com    Shared use is free

[6]  www.reengineeringllc.com/iblClient1.java

Adrian Walker
Reengineering


On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 9:30 AM, Axel Rauschmayer <axel@rauschma.de> wrote:

> I'm currently reading Hendler's brilliant book "Semantic Web for the
> Working Ontologist". It really drove home the point that OWL is not a good
> fit when using RDF for *data* (names are generally not unique, open world
> assumption, ...).
>
> But what is the alternative? For my applications, I have the following
> requirements:
>
> - Properties: transitivity, inverse, sub-properties.
> - Resources, classes: equivalence. For my purposes, equivalence is a way of
> implementing the topic merging in topic maps [1].
> - Constraints for integrity checking.
> - Schema declaration: partially overlaps with constraints, serves for
> documentation and for providing default values for properties.
> - Computed property values: for example, one property value being the
> concatenation of two other property values etc.
>
> The difficulty seems to me to find something universal that fulfills these
> requirements and is still easy to understand. Inference, when used for
> transitivity and equivalence, is simple, but when it comes to editing RDF,
> they can confound the user: Why can some triples be replaced, others not?
> Why do I have to replace the triples of a different instance if I want to
> replace the triples in my instance?
>
> While it's not necessarily easier to understand for end users, I've always
> found Prolog easy to understand, where OWL is more of a challenge.
>
> So what solutions are out there? I would prefer description logic
> programming to OWL. Does Prolog-like backward-chaining make sense for RDF?
> If so, how would it be combined with SPARQL; or would it replace it? Or
> maybe something frame-based?
>
> Am I making sense? I would appreciate any pointers, hints and insights.
>
> Axel
>
> [1] http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/index.html#desc-merging
>
> --
> Axel.Rauschmayer@ifi.lmu.de
> http://www.pst.ifi.lmu.de/~rauschma/<http://www.pst.ifi.lmu.de/%7Erauschma/>
>
>
>
>
>