Re: comment: working draft on n-ary relations note

Indeed, the whole point of the note was to show people how to represent 
these important structures in the inherently binary languages such as 
RDF and OWL. The mission of this working group is not to change the 
languages but rather to help people use W3C standards. It seems that we 
are in agreement here. Thank you again for your comments.
	
Natasha

On Oct 26, 2004, at 3:25 AM, Gian Piero Zarri wrote:

>  Dear Natashia,
>
> Thank you for your kind reply. I understand well that the solutions 
> proposed by the SWBP group concern only the W3C-supported languages; 
> the problem (if any...) is that such languages are inherently binary, 
> and that any solution (independently from the specific problem of 
> "purchase") that will try to transform them into n-ary languages will 
> always be, probably, "odd" and "artificial" to some extent.
>
> On the other hand, the three examples you proposed in your working 
> paper are clearly examples of "narratives", i.e., of documents or 
> document fragments where the main part of the information content 
> consists in the description of "events" concerning some "actors" 
> (characters, personages, etc.) – the term "event" is taken here in its 
> more general meaning, covering also strictly related notions like 
> fact, action, state, situation etc. These actors try to attain a 
> specific result, experience particular situations, manipulate some 
> (concrete or abstract) materials, send or receive messages, buy, sell, 
> deliver etc. Narratives are extremely important from an economic point 
> of view, given that they represent the essential part of corporate 
> knowledge documents (memos, policy statements, reports, minutes etc.), 
> news stories, normative and legal texts, medical records, many 
> intelligence messages, etc. Their importance is, by the way, 
> demonstrated by the fact that you have felt there was a need to to 
> take them into account, see you working paper. Unfortunately, 
> narratives cannot be dealt with in a satisfactory way with the actual 
> RDF/OWL-like tools, whether or not this should be a cause of concern 
> to W3C.
>
> With best regards,
>
>
> G.P. Zarri
>
>
>
> Natasha Noy wrote:
>
>> Dear Gian,
>>
>> Thank you very much for your elaborate comments. It is interesting to 
>> see how you would represent it in a different language (NKRL, in your 
>> case). I would like to point out, however, that the mission of this 
>> Working Group is to propose solutions specifically for RDF and OWL 
>> languages -- the Semantic Web languages recommended by W3C.
>>
>> It is also not clear what is the problem with the generality that you 
>> are referring to? Note that the goal of the note is not to present a 
>> general solution on how you would represent anything with the verb 
>> "purchase" in it, but rather how to express a certain knowledge 
>> structure in RDF/OWL. You may have misinterpreted our goals.
>>
>> Thanks a lot again for your comments.
>>
>> Natasha
>>
>>
>

Received on Wednesday, 27 October 2004 02:08:05 UTC