Re: N-relational entities (Was owl:Class and owl:Thing)

''We have indeed n-relational classes (which we call 'templates'), not just 
n-relational predicates. These n-relational entities are Resources.<HT/>



Hans,



I want once more emphasize that wholly sympathize with your project, knowing 
that you do real things. But can't say the same about the reference you 
mentioned several times, which titled as ''Defining N-ary Relations on the 
Semantic Web: Use with Individuals''.

And you make me commentate such works which I’d prefer to diplomatically 
ignore, for one of the editors is coming from Russia. Well, if the issue is 
raised...., it must be somehow resolved.

Shortly, the reference pervasively supports my simple claim that the OWL 
language has a fatally poor expressivity for an adequate representation of 
real objects, states, changes, and relations. Accordingly, all its issues 
unnaturally begotten are doomed to be feeble and decrepit.



If unprejudiced, one may easily see my point putting in one thread what i 
said before:



''Relations should be analyzed not only with respect to the number of terms 
they connect and formal properties as cardinality, symmetry, transitivity, 
reflexivity. This is all the subject of a formal relational logic. As old as 
Russell's statement that 'every proposition should be regarded as expressing 
a relation between two and more things', like in the from R(x, y, z,...).'' 
<Asha/>



Now see the use cases from that work, which simply overrides the Russell's 
claim, placing instead the relational variables neither classes nor 
individual variables but just objects:

Several common use cases fall under the category of n-ary relations. Here 
are some examples:

  1.. Christine has breast tumor with high probability. There is a binary 
relation between the person Christine and diagnosis breast_tumor and there 
is a qualitative probability value describing this relation (high).
  2.. Steve has temperature, which is high, but falling. The individual 
Steve has two values for two different aspects of a has_temperature 
relation: its magnitude is high and its trend is falling.
  3.. John buys a "Lenny the Lion" book from books.example.com for $15 as a 
birthday gift. There is a relation, in which individual John, entity 
books.example.com and the book Lenny_the_Lion participate. This relation has 
other values such as the purpose (birthday_gift) and the amount ($15).'' 
<NR/>
''Above all, relationship should be considered with respect to the nature 
and meanings of its components; for it is a real entity (like causality and 
space-time relations) rather than an idea, although expressed by verbs and 
propositions and abstract nouns and relational adjectives.''<Asha/>

This means that verbs show existence ('be', 'exist'), state ('have', 
possess', 'know'), action ('do', 'change'), and relationships ('relate', 
'cause', 'represent'). In the strict sense, neither of the above cases 
belongs to a class of sentences expressing some sort of relationships, if 
only formal logical. So what they really signify? For this we have to 
remember what kinds of properties are in the world.



''The construct of owl:Property, with its two basic types: owl: 
ObjectProperty (mapping individuals to individuals, and called a binary 
relation) and owl:DatatypeProperty (mapping individuals to datatype values, 
and called a binary relation). In fact, there are monadic and diadic 
properties; essential and accidental; atomic, transient, complex, or 
emergent; particular and general, etc. But mostly important to tell the 
formal properties (attributes) from the ontological properties, which are 
generally classified as:
1. the property of being a substance (object), substantial properties;
2. the property of being a state (quantity or quality), quantitative and 
qualitative properties;
3. the property of being a process (change, action, operation), dynamic, 
functional, operational properties;
4. the property of being a relationship; relational properties per se.
Thus, in the owl domain, owl:Property is badly narrowed to the property of 
being a formal (functional) relationship, direct and inverse; without 
explicitly identifying the nature of relations between the connected 
components, spatial, temporal, causal, whole/part, syntactic, semantic, 
pragmatic, etc.''<Asha/>



So if one wisely follows the golden rule [to be related to real world 
domains, the logical notions of 'definition', 'class', 'property' and 
'statement' should be reified within the fundamental context of entity 
classes], the real interpretation of the use cases will be rather different:



The first sentence signifies some pathological [state, medical condition, 
with a certain probability] of some human being; or involves [the property 
of somebody to be in a state].

The second sentence again signifies some sort of physical state [quantity, 
temperature of a physical body, body temperature, which values are changing 
somehow]

The third sentence signifies some type of human action [buying, or 
purchasing] having all the typical characteristics for this sort of 
activity, the buyer, the seller, the cost, the purpose.





Regret to say, but the work is far away of what it promises: ''ontology 
patterns for representing n-ary relations and discusses what users must 
consider when choosing these patterns.'' <NR/>

Still hardly will be surprised to see this stuff declared as another 
standard, if only 'the standard of OWL simplicity'.



Respects,

Azamat Abdoullaev

http://www.eis.com.cy




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Hans Teijgeler" <hans.teijgeler@quicknet.nl>
To: "'Azamat'" <abdoul@cytanet.com.cy>
Cc: <semantic-web@w3.org>; "'ONTAC-WG General Discussion'" 
<ontac-forum@colab.cim3.net>; "Noy, Natasha" <noy@stanford.edu>; "Rector, 
Alan" <rector@cs.man.ac.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2006 11:56 AM
Subject: N-relational entities (Was owl:Class and owl:Thing)


> Hi Azamat,
>
> <AA>
> ...for it is a real entity (like causality and space-time relations) 
> rather
> than an idea...
> </AA>
>
> We have indeed n-relational classes (which we call 'templates'), not just
> n-relational predicates. These n-relational entities are Resources. See 
> for
> example the work of Natasha Noy and Alan Rector [1].
>
> We can (and do) attach any kind of meta information to them (record 
> creation
> datetime, record creator (shown below), content meta data (e.g. "Approved
> for Construction", a reference to a Change Order, etc), and/or, if
> necessary, even a SPARQL script and/or rules.
>
> An example of a template instance is:
>
>    <tp:ST-3401 rdf:ID="ST-734651">
>        <dm:recordCreator rdf:resource="#JOHN_DOE-20060125T1037Z"/>
>        <tp:possessor rdf:resource="#FPO-347621-20060124T1645Z"/>
>        <tp:propertyType
> rdf:resource="http://www.15926.org/2006/02/rdl#MAWP"/>
>        <tp:basePropertyType
> rdf:resource="http://www.15926.org/2006/02/rdl#PRESSURE"/>
>        <tp:numericalValue rdf:resource="#XSFL_100"/>
>        <tp:unitOfMeasure
> rdf:resource="http://www.15926.org/2006/02/rdl#BARG"/>
>    </tp:ST-3401>
>
>    <rdl:XML_SCHEMA_FLOAT rdf:ID="XSFL_100">
>        <dm:content
> rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#float">100</dm:content>
>    </rdl:XML_SCHEMA_FLOAT>
>
> where ST-3401 is the ID of the applicable template class in OWL, with the
> label "quantified property of individual". We are building a vocabulary of
> such template classes.
>
> (Note the fact that we also turn Literals into Resources. That makes
> translations easier (also represented by means of templates)).
>
> Regards,
> Hans
>
> PS dm: = ISO 15926-2 data model in OWL, rdl: = ISO 15926-4 vocabulary of
> reference data, tp: = ISO 15926-7 vocabulary of template classes
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-n-aryRelations/
>
> ============================================================
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Azamat [mailto:abdoul@cytanet.com.cy]
> Sent: Monday, April 03, 2006 17:38
> To: Hans Teijgeler
> Cc: semantic-web@w3.org; ONTAC-WG General Discussion
> Subject: Re: owl:Class and owl:Thing
>
> ''What exactly did you have in mind when you referred to "n-relational
> ontology of things"? <HT/>
>
> Hans:
>
> Relations should be analyzed not only with respect to the number of terms
> they connect and formal properties as cardinality, symmetry, transitivity,
> reflexivity. This is all the subject of a formal relational logic. As old 
> as
> Russell statement that 'every proposition should be regarded as expressing 
> a
> relation between two and more things', like in the from R(x, y, z,...).
> Above all, relationship should be considered with respect to the nature 
> and
> meanings of its components; for it is a real entity (like causality and
> space-time relations) rather than an idea, although expressed by verbs and
> propositions and abstract nouns and relational adjectives. Thus here comes
> ''n-relational ontology of entities''.
>
> Regards,
> Azamat Abdoullaev
> http://www.eis.com.cy
>
> -- 
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Received on Tuesday, 4 April 2006 11:34:39 UTC