RE: asn06/OWL vs. UML [was: asn06 take 2 (Abstract Syntax as a kind of ontology?)]

> I agree UML is genuine option.
> 
> As you say there is the "interchange within the WG" issue that we've 
> already discussed [1].

Why not exchanging diagrams (together with some serialization,
e.g. in OWL)?
 
> Second there is the issue that the point of this is for 
> extensibility. 
> In Sandro's "use a small OWL fragment with syntactic sugar" 
> proposal we 
> can exploit the extensibility of OWL. When an extension needs 
> to add new 
> productions to an existing abstract syntax node it just 
> declares a new 
> subclass. That new declaration can be in another self contained OWL 
> model and merging the two models is both well defined and 
> simple. It's 
> not clear to me that either is true of merging in the UML case, but 
> perhaps that's a limitation of my knowledge of UML.

Yes, it is. UML provides sophisticated ways of merging packages
(similar to XMLS's possibilities with import and redefine).
 
> Third, in Sandro's extensibility proposal [2] a RIF processor 
> would go 
> out and resolve the namespace of a unknown syntax element and 
> obtain ... 
> something. With the asn06-as-OWL approach that something could be or 
> include OWL. Whereas the equivalent for UML, XMI, really 
> seems to be a 
> tool for diagram exchange rather than runtime data exchange [3].

No, XMI is a model, not a diagram, exchange language, so
you have all of the language definition encoded.
 
> [By the way, how does "list of X" work in UML?]

I don't see for what this would be needed in an abstract syntax?
 
-Gerd

Received on Tuesday, 21 November 2006 20:55:34 UTC