Re: web to semantic web : an automated approach

Hi,

On 23.10.2008, at 17:02, रविंदर ठाकुर (ravinder  
thakur) wrote:

> actually i am not a big fan of ontologies. infact i think trying to  
> fit data into some ontology might be wrong. the problems are that  
> ontologies are overly restirctive if they are finite and well  
> defined and if they are ambiguious then they are not ontologies.
>
> eg. take the general example of one's parents. its very normal to  
> have ontology with parents defined as one father and one mother but  
> what happens to the case of surrogate mothers, or doner fathers/ 
> mothers etc. and what happens to the adopted kids. how can be their  
> parent relationships be represented completely with any well defined  
> ontology ? on the other hand only using RDF without any creating any  
> relation to some associated ontology might be a complete system.
>
> if ontology is finite and well defined then it won't be complete and  
> if its not well defined and not finite, well then i would say its  
> not an ontology.

Hmmm... I understand what you're saying. However, this is probably one  
of the reasons why OWL and RDFS (in one a popular interpretation) have  
the open-world assumption. So, in fact, an ontology or any data  
following this assumption can never claim to be complete or finite.  
Ontologies are not database schemas. For a system as vast and chaotic  
as the Web I think this is quite sensible to assume.

Cheers,
Knud


-------------------------------------------------
Knud Möller, MA
+353 - 91 - 495086
Smile Group: http://smile.deri.ie
Digital Enterprise Research Institute
   National University of Ireland, Galway
Institiúid Taighde na Fiontraíochta Digití
   Ollscoil na hÉireann, Gaillimh