Re: CC/PP, RDF, DAML and Knowledge Representation

Mark,

I think you're touching on an interesting but deep and complex subject 
here.  Some of the matters are topics of long-running and impassioned 
debates among the RDF logicians, though I think I see some seeds of 
consensus emerging.

I have a lot of sympathy with what I think you're trying to achieve.  But I 
don't think that your use of contexts is quite in line with what either 
Sowa or myself had in mind -- I think you're really after the simpler 
notion of disjunction.  (BTW, some more recent of my ideas about contexts 
are at [1].)   That is, contexts may be usable to achieve the goals you're 
aiming for, but I think they're overkill.

As it stands, RDF embodies the notion of conjunction -- logical AND -- an 
RDF graph is true if all of its constituent statements are true.  So while 
core RDF can express that A AND B are true, it has no way to express that 
their disjunction (A OR B) is true.  DAML adds semantics to the base of RDF 
which allow for disjunctions to be expressed.  (To get a feel for the 
capabilities of DAML, look for some of the old papers on CLASSIC -- I found 
[2] was particularly useful.)

I think the immediate focus should be on the logical constructs, without 
(necessarily) getting into the full context works.  It may be that some 
elements of mechanisms used for context are required, along thew lines on 
N3 formulae [3].

#g
--

[1] http://www.ninebynine.org/RDFNotes/UsingContextsWithRDF.html

[2] 
http://www.ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm/papers/living-with-classic-abstract.html

[3] http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Notation3.html


At 03:57 PM 6/7/02 +0100, Butler, Mark wrote:

>(If you want to unsubscribe from this list, send email to
>www-mobile-request@w3.org with unsubscribe in the subject header)
>
>I think our recent discussions on www-mobile have been very interesting so
>I'd like to thank everyone for their comments. I would like to outline my
>current thinking on CC/PP, based on what I have learnt from the Sowa
>book[6]. Note I'm still getting to grips with some concepts here but I'm
>interested in discussing my ideas if you will forgive them for not being
>fully formed.
>
>As I mentioned before, I think CC/PP needs a clear data model or
>interpretation. I don't think we have this at the moment and I think it is
>causing confusion. Specifically there seems to be misunderstanding that as
>RDF is the basis of the Semantic Web, that simply using RDF adds "semantic
>understandability". RDF provides well founded model-theoretic semantics [1]
>i.e. an abstract mathematical account of how to interpret RDF model but it
>does not automatically provide real world semantics i.e. an interpretation
>of the model as statements about the external world. So even when we use RDF
>we need to give some though to our data model so I'll try to outline my
>current thinking.
>
>I think the data model needs to consist of two things. Firstly it needs
>attributes (or properties depending on your terminology) e.g.
>
>SoundCapable -> No
>Accept -> [text/html, image/gif, image/jpeg]
>AcceptLanguage -> [fr, en]
>
>i.e. single valued, set valued or sequence valued respectively (we'll ignore
>the issue of data typing for the moment). A couple of points here i)
>attributes are 80% of the functionality of CC/PP ii) it's pretty easy to
>represent attributes in XML or RDF, which I guess makes people question why
>we need RDF.
>
>However attributes are not the whole story. I think the other thing the data
>model needs is contexts (see John Sowa "Knowledge Representation", p.268).
>Sowa defines contexts as "Complementary ways of describing the same object
>can be mixed, but only when the contexts are explicitly distinguished. ...
>(For example) Tom was a baby in 1976 but an adult in 1997". Graham has done
>some work on contexts - see [2]. In CC/PP we already encounter examples
>where we describe the same object in complementary ways e.g.
>
>1) The device has the set of capabilities X, and X contains capabilities V,
>then the proxy allows capabilities Y but blocks capabilities Z.
>
>2) The device has the default set of capabilities A and the standard (i.e.
>non-default) set of capabilities B.
>
>So are X, Y V and Z in 1 and A and B in 2 talking about the same object?
>Well it depends on your interpretation. I'd argue they are talking about the
>same object i.e. the constraints that a server must meet when returning
>content to a device.
>
>In CC/PP, these situations are represented by preceding the attributes with
>a resource and a property to differentiate the attribute i.e. set its
>context. There are three examples of this in CC/PP: components (see Figure
>2-1b in [3]), defaults (see Figure 3-4b in [3]) and proxies (see figure
>3-11b in [3]. Components though, as I have previously noted, not really
>required as generally an attribute can only occur in a single component.
>
>However representing contexts requires careful thought. If you process an
>RDF graph, essentially you have to identify the attribute, then move
>backward through the graph to determine its context(s). In DELI[5], to
>simplify matters, I process the graph and convert it into a different data
>model so the user does not have to deal with RDF. I deal with context partly
>by "resolving" multiple instances of the same attribute i.e. merging
>defaults and non-defaults them together. In other cases the context is
>recorded in the attribute i.e. component is a property of the attribute.
>Hence in DELI, contexts are not first order citizens like attributes.
>Perhaps DELI is using the wrong data model?
>
>Also, one of the things I'd like to see in CC/PP is the ability to AND and
>OR attributes as you can do in Media Feature Sets [4]. CC/PP already has an
>implicit interpretation of profiles as ANDs and ORs: all the attributes in a
>profile are ANDed except for complex attributes where the individual values
>are joined by ORs. It would be good to able to use ANDs and ORs in a more
>general way, e.g.
>
>if portrait then
>         ScreenWidth -> 240
>         ScreenHeight -> 320
>if landscape then
>         ScreenWidth -> 320
>         ScreenHeight -> 240
>
>However this requires contexts! So perhaps if we had a general way of
>representing contexts, we could use them to provide AND / OR conjunctions
>also.
>
>I'm sorry if the concept of a context seems abstract (I still don't fully
>understand it myself) but I think we need to be able to discuss issues like
>this without dropping down to the XML or XML serialisation of RDF as having
>a clear data model will help regardless of the format we use.
>
>As ever, suggestions / comments / criticisms are welcome.
>
>[1] Hayes, P., W3C Working Draft, RDF Model Theory, 29 April 2002,
>http://www.w3c.org/TR/rdf-mt/
>
>[2] Klyne G, Contexts for information modelling,
>http://public.research.mimesweeper.com/RDF/RDFContexts.html
>
>[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/CCPP-struct-vocab/
>
>[4] Klyne, G. IETF RFC 2533: A Syntax for Describing Media Feature Sets,
>March 1999 http://www.faqs.org/rfc/rfc2533.txt
>
>[5] DELI, http://delicon.sourceforge.net/
>
>[6] Sowa, J. F. Knowledge Representation, Brooks/Cole, 2000. ISBN:
>0-534-94965
>
>Mark H. Butler, PhD
>Research Scientist                HP Labs Bristol
>mark-h_butler@hp.com
>Internet: http://www-uk.hpl.hp.com/people/marbut/

-------------------
Graham Klyne
<GK@NineByNine.org>

Received on Friday, 7 June 2002 13:30:13 UTC