RE: exchanging OWL through RIF --> OWL roles for RIF and vice versa

Jim, your other 2 use cases are significant enough to warrant a 2nd reply: these are close to the crux of OWL use within RIF I suspect (which I suppose could be viewed as "rule extensions to OWL" but I think that probably means something else to many people).

In both the cases below, I have rules defined against some data model that is equivalent to some ontology. I need to map from 1 ontology to another and (as much as possible) retain the same semantics for the rules. So the role of OWL in RIF is 

(1) OWL as a technology-neutral vocabulary for rules.

There is also the aspect of the ontological interchange for RIF rules: the OWL associated with my RIF ruleset needs to be compared to the target OWL, and thence the RIF rules converted to the new ontology. So there may be some ontology transformation rules defined in RIF elsewhere on the web that I pick up to do this for me.

(2) RIF as a container for ontology (OWL - OWL) translation rules.

What am I missing?

Thanks!

Paul Vincent
Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor --- Business Rule Management
OMG Standards for Business Rules, PRR & BPMI


-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Hendler [mailto:hendler@cs.umd.edu] 
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2006 3:50 PM
To: Vincent, Paul D; edbark@nist.gov; Michael Kifer
Cc: RIF WG
Subject: RE: exchanging OWL through RIF
Importance: Low


...

2 - Consider an organization using a number of rules to maintain
their processes, they merge with another organization doing the same.
The boss says "this is crazy, we have multiple definitions of key
things we need in running the business, like the definition of a
purchase order" - his golfing buddy convinces him he needs to use an
ontology to do this and to merge data.
     Some mapping of rules to RDFS/OWL would make this much easier

3 - A large company has various activities going on.  One group is
using  RDFS/OWL to manage corporate Web site assets.  Another one is
implementing the business  rules that run a number of transactions
through the corporate data infrastructure.  Problems start to emerge
where the data and the web assets are not consistent.  Someone says,
we need to see if the RDFS/OWL and the Rules are computing the same
thing.
   Some way to check consistency between some or all of the rules and
ontologies is needed

Hope that helps
  Jim H.


[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-semweb-cg/2005Jun/0014.html

At 1:06 -0800 3/3/06, Vincent, Paul D wrote:
>Jim - thanks. My apologies in advance for my lack of understanding 
>on the use of OWL...
>
>>...  They or some other org decide they'd
>>like to use it on databases and datasets for datacleansing or other
>>"rule based" operation.
>>     Recoding the whole into a new rules language would be
>>prohibitively expensive unless there is some sort of automagic
>>translator of some or all of the RDFS/OWL they use.
>
>It would seem to me that this would be a case for exchange of OWL 
>ontologies and/or interchange of different ontology representations 
>(eg different varieties of OWL?).
>
>Or: are we talking about, say, some hospital publishing some rules 
>for interpreting OWL (eg mapping OWL to a DB schema), which can then 
>be interchanged / shared amongst other users of this ontology? And 
>if so, what rule languages are typically applied to OWL vocabularies?
>
>Paul Vincent
>Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor --- Business Rule Management
>OMG Standards for Business Rules, PRR & BPMI
>mobile: +44 (0)781 493 7229 ... office: +44 (0)20 7871 7229 
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Jim Hendler [mailto:hendler@cs.umd.edu]
>Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2006 11:16 PM
>To: Vincent, Paul D; edbark@nist.gov; Michael Kifer
>Cc: RIF WG
>Subject: RE: exchanging OWL through RIF
>Importance: Low
>
>Back before the group was chartered, I had shared some use cases for
>OWL meets Rules in various member lists.  One of the examples was:
>
>At 19:52 -0400 6/5/05, Jim Hendler wrote:
>>1 - Consider an organization like the  Natl Cancer Inst which has a
>>big OWL ontology (i.e. has a number of full time people working on
>>curation, versioning, etc).  They or some other org decide they'd
>>like to use it on databases and datasets for datacleansing or other
>>"rule based" operation.
>>     Recoding the whole into a new rules language would be
>>prohibitively expensive unless there is some sort of automagic
>>translator of some or all of the RDFS/OWL they use.
>
>This, I think, is more like what Ed was proposing.  I am afraid I'm
>not familiar enough with some of the things Paul says in this thread,
>but I think this pushes it a little further.   I can give more
>details of a cancer example, but it's a lot like what Ed talked
>about, but I don't need to postulate multiple organizations - all I
>need is one group doing "modeling" and another trying to use those
>models for "data related" ops (i.e. open world OWL meets Closed World
>rules)
>   -JH
>
>
>At 14:59 -0800 3/2/06, Vincent, Paul D wrote:
>>I may be a little off base here, but: design-time model interchange
>>from say OWL to a (production) rules engine, where the (vocabulary)
>>"rules" would map to the object (/data) model the rules engine works
>>with, could in theory be covered by the ODM --> class diagram + PRR
>>mapping using MDA.
>>
>>[Caveat: The role of OWL in rule interchange seems (to me) to be
>>around describing the context (ie vocabulary) that the rules are
>>specified in. The target *must* already have its own ontology/data
>>to be mapped - after all, sending rules + data is not very useful
>>outside of verification tasks (as indicated in Harold Boley's F2F1
>>use case showing rules + data = results etc)].
>>
>>Another transformation that could possibly be done in RIF would be
>>OWL <-- --> SBVR, although again this is more likely to be a
>>design-time issue when in the context of conventional IT systems
>>(and again could also be done via an ODM <-- --> SBVR "model"). But
>>for ontologists / business consultants sharing vocabularies across
>>the semantic web, maybe this would be interesting.
>>
>>I await the OWL experts' views on this with interest!
>>
>>Paul Vincent
>>Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor --- Business Rule Management
>>mobile: +44 (0)781 493 7229 ... office: +44 (0)20 7871 7229
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: public-rif-wg-request@w3.org
>>[mailto:public-rif-wg-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Ed Barkmeyer
>>Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2006 9:33 PM
>>To: Michael Kifer
>>Cc: RIF WG
>>Subject: Re: exchanging OWL through RIF
>>
>>
>>Michael Kifer wrote:
>>
>>>   I am having a second thought about the requirement that OWL should be
>>>   exchangeable through RIF by encoding it in FOL (which I am 
>>>guilty of voting
>>>   for also and now attribute it to sleep deprivation :-).
>>>
>>>   I think this requirement is completely misguided.
>>
>>I think the above statement of the requirement can be misunderstood, but I
>>don't think the intent is at all misguided.
>>
>>It is not a matter of "exchanging an OWL ontology"; the requirement is to
>>deliver the semantic content of an OWL ontology as a ruleset, so that a rules
>>engine can incorporate that content into its rulebase.
>>
>>A pseudo use-case: A given site "Uhu" using OWL ontologies and an OWL engine
>>may find it necessary to communicate with a site "Rex" that has only
>>"rulesets" and "rule engines" for some task in which Uhu needs the support of
>>Rex.  In this case, it is important that Uhu be able to convert the relevant
>>OWL ontology to a "rules" (RIF) form, so that it can be used by Rex in
>>performing its supporting task.  And the requirement for RIF is that its "FOL
>>subset" be able to capture the semantics of the OWL ontology.
>>
>>The alternative view of this scenario is that Uhu simply sends the OWL
>>ontology, and it is incumbent on Rex to convert the OWL ontology to its
>>internal "rules" form.  There is nothing wrong with this view, except that it
>>has no role for RIF -- it makes the OWL->rules conversion a software project
>>for the Rex engine, and another project for the ILOG engine, and another for
>>the Jena engine, etc., creating lots of work for the engine 
>>providers and many
>>third parties who are familiar with the proprietary rules forms.  By
>>comparison, any tool that can convert OWL to RIF without loss (standard form
>>to standard form) gives Uhu what is need to work with Rex, and also Rudi and
>>Regina, no matter what rules engines they have.
>>
>>>   For interoperability, we will need to be able to send queries to OWL
>>>   engines. Representation of those queries will need to be hashed out later.
>>
>>This is, of course, exactly the inverse use case.  Here the Rex 
>>site needs the
>>assistance of the Uhu site in making some inference.  But Rex does not need
>>RIF for this at all, only something like SPARQL.  But suppose that Rex needs
>>to send this ruleset to Regina, so that Regina can use its local KB to assist
>>Rex in making some inferences.  Then when Rex sends the RIF ruleset 
>>to Regina,
>>the SPARQL queries to Uhu that appear in some of the antecedents must have a
>>RIF representation.  (And I think this is in some sense the degenerate case.
>>It is entirely possible that Regina is a 'hybrid' site, combining both DL and
>>Rules reasoning capabilities, with the consequence that Regina wants to
>>"understand" the SPARQL query, not just blindly send it to Uhu.)
>>
>>It seems to me that "Web-based Rules exchange" demands that we 
>>support BOTH of
>>these two use cases, not just the latter.
>>
>>-Ed
>>
>>--
>>Edward J. Barkmeyer                        Email: edbark@nist.gov
>>National Institute of Standards & Technology
>>Manufacturing Systems Integration Division
>>100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263                Tel: +1 301-975-3528
>>Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263                FAX: +1 301-975-4482
>>
>>"The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST,
>>    and have not been reviewed by any Government authority."
>
>--
>Professor James Hendler			  Director
>Joint Institute for Knowledge Discovery	  	  301-405-2696
>UMIACS, Univ of Maryland			  301-314-9734 (Fax)
>College Park, MD 20742	 		  http://www.cs.umd.edu/~hendler
>Web Log: http://www.mindswap.org/blog/author/hendler

-- 
Professor James Hendler			  Director
Joint Institute for Knowledge Discovery	  	  301-405-2696
UMIACS, Univ of Maryland			  301-314-9734 (Fax)
College Park, MD 20742	 		  http://www.cs.umd.edu/~hendler
Web Log: http://www.mindswap.org/blog/author/hendler

Received on Monday, 6 March 2006 08:57:40 UTC