Re: Interpretation of RDF reification

Dan,

Hearts, minds, and budgets are only won over by major
applications (AKA "killer apps").

 > It sounds like we're at an awkward stage; RDF and OWL
 > are 'legacy' (from your perspective) but the tools to
 > properly exploit CLIF aren't quite ready to hit the
 > mainstream yet (opensource or not). I appreciate that
 > KIF got some traction, but it didn't win enough hearts,
 > minds and budgets to stop XML taking over the world.
 > Is CLIF expected to occupy a bigger niche?

It's still an open question whether "the tools to properly
exploit" RDF and OWL are ready to hit the mainstream.

CLIF could just as well be called KIF 4.0 (i.e., a follow-on
from KIF 3.0, which can be downloaded from Stanford).  But
there is no plan to make CLIF and CGIF popular languages.
They are intended for system developers who implement the
tools used by domain experts, who use languages and GUIs
tailored for their purposes.  (See the three levels I
outlined in my previous note to Adrian Walker.)

As an example of how CGIF (Conceptual Graph Interchange
Format) is being used, see the following excerpt, which is
taken from a note I sent to another forum.  Note that the web
site for the Sonetto system never even mentions CGIF because
the people who use the Category #2 interfaces never see it.

John
_______________________________________________________________

I would like to mention an example of a very large application
that has been able to support interoperability by doing
semi-automated extraction of ontologies from unstructured
documents.  The system does have a rather simple upper level
ontology, but the axioms required for interoperability are
extracted as needed -- they are not predefined by the ontology.
See the paragraph at the end of this note.

More info about it can be found on their web site, but the
descriptions are rather salesy and don't get into the technical
detail.  The developer, Gerard Ellis, is writing an article
for publication, but it is not yet available.

I wouldn't claim that these techniques will obviate all need
for an upper ontology, but they do support my point that the
lower levels of the ontology, which are highly task dependent,
are where the detailed axioms belong -- and those axioms can
often be derived with the assistance of users who have no
training in formal logic or even the usual IT.

John Sowa
_______________________________________________________________

The largest application system that uses conceptual graphs is
Sonetto (IVIS Group 2006), which was designed by Gerard Ellis and
implemented with extended versions of the earlier algorithms by
Levinson and Ellis (1992).  A key innovation of Sonetto is its
semi-automated methods for extracting ontologies and business
rules from unstructured documents.  The users who assist Sonetto
in the knowledge extraction process are familiar with the subject
matter, but they have no training in programming or knowledge
engineering.  The Conceptual Graph Interchange Format (CGIF) is
the knowledge representation for ontologies, rules, and queries.
CGIF is also used to manage the schemas of documents and other
objects in the system and to represent the rules that translate
CGIF to XML and other formats.

References:

IVIS Group (2006) "Sonetto overview," http://www.sonetto.com/sonetto/

Levinson, Robert A., & Gerard Ellis (1992) "Multilevel
hierarchical retrieval," Knowledge Based Systems 5:3, pp. 233-244.

Received on Monday, 27 March 2006 08:12:30 UTC