Re: owl:sameAs - Harmful to provenance?

On 4/4/13 9:38 AM, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
> On 4/4/13 1:43 AM, Alan Ruttenberg wrote:
>>
>> Dropping Jim from cc in deference to him finishing his defense.
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 9:58 PM, David Booth <david@dbooth.org 
>> <mailto:david@dbooth.org>> wrote:
>>
>>     On 04/02/2013 05:02 PM, Alan Ruttenberg wrote:
>>
>>         On Tuesday, April 2, 2013, David Booth wrote:
>>             On 03/27/2013 10:56 PM, Pat Hayes wrote:
>>                 On Mar 27, 2013, at 7:32 PM, Jim McCusker wrote:
>>
>>                     If only owl:sameAs were used correctly...
>>
>>                 Well, I agree that is a problem, but don't draw the
>>         conclusion that
>>                 there is something wrong with sameAs, just because
>>         people keep using
>>                 it wrong.
>>
>>             Agreed.  And furthermore, don't draw the conclusion that
>>         someone has
>>             used owl:sameAs wrong just because you get garbage when
>>         you merge
>>             two graphs that individually worked just fine.  Those two
>>         graphs may
>>             have been written assuming different sets of interpretations.
>>
>>         In that case I would certainly conclude that they have used
>>         it wrong.
>>         Have you not been reading what Pat and I have been writing?
>>
>>
>>     I've read lots of what you and Pat have written.  And I've
>>     learned a lot from it -- particularly in learning about ambiguity
>>     from Pat.  And I'm in full agreement that owl:sameAs is *often*
>>     misused.
>>
>>     But I don't believe that getting garbage when merging two graphs
>>     that individually worked fine *necessarily* indicates that
>>     owl:sameAs was misused -- even when it appears on the surface to
>>     be causing the
>>     problem. 
>>
>>
>> The word misuse is tricky here. If each individually acted without 
>> knowledge of the other, what you describe can certainly arise. 
>> However that doesn't change the fact that in the end someone is wrong.
> What about the following with regards to the *tricky* situation:
>
> In the end something is wrong, and it could be any combination of:
>
> 1. data publisher
> 2. data consumer
> 3. tools used by data consumer -- which may or may not handle 
> reasoning and inference in a flexible manner e.g., leverage named 
> graph partitioning and conditional invocation of reasoner.
>
> David:
>
> The reality above still doesn't invalidate the fundamental point about 
> interpretation or RDF semantic though i.e., when a human or machine 
> attempts to make sense of the claims in the RDF model constrained 
> graph. An interpretation could be that that graph is structurally fine 
> but logically incoherent. 

Tweaked response, for clarity:

What about the following with regards to the *tricky* situation:

In the end something is wrong, and it could be any combination of:

1. data publisher
2. data consumer
3. tools used by data consumer -- which may or may not handle reasoning 
and inference in a flexible manner e.g., leverage named graph 
partitioning and conditional invocation of reasoner.

David:

The reality above still doesn't invalidate the fundamental point about 
interpretation or RDF *semantics* though i.e., when a human or machine 
attempts to make sense of the claims in an RDF model constrained graph 
-- an interpretation could be that the graph is structurally fine but 
logically incoherent.


-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen 
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
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Received on Thursday, 4 April 2013 14:21:58 UTC