Re: Question about OWL-S sequence

> [Jeff Dalton]

> Why can't I use the URIs of process occurrences to put
> them in multiple sequences and use them to specify the partial
> order.  For example, if I wanted A before B, B before C, and B
> before D, I could use something like this:
> 
>   (unordered
>     (sequence URI-for-A URI-for-B)
>     (sequence URI-for-B URI-for-C)
>     (sequence URI-for-B URI-for-D))
> 
> What is it in OWL-S that disallows that approach?

I don't know.  We're in the zone one often winds up in when using
ontology to implement syntax.  Suppose I wanted to write a sentence
using the same occurrence of the word "winds" as in the first sentence
of this paragraph.  Not the same word, the same _occurrence_.  It's
ridiculous to even have to think about such matters, but to get the
right thing to happen in RDF, one would have to identify the property
that links a sequence to an occurrence and make sure it was had a
"functional inverse" or whatever, i.e., that an occurrence has at most
one expression it occurs _in_.  It's hard to bring oneself to do the
work to get all this straight.

                                             -- Drew

-- 
                                   -- Drew McDermott
                                      Yale Computer Science Department

Received on Sunday, 9 May 2004 22:23:17 UTC