Re: proposal for working on the ontology language

At 12:39 PM -0500 12/11/01, Tim Finin wrote:
>"Peter F. Patel-Schneider" wrote:
>>   I am concerned that the group is not working on the ontology language
>>   itself.  There are a number of changes that need to be done to DAML+OIL,
>>   largely because of changes that have happened since DAML+OIL was designed.
>>   ...
>
>Are adding capabilities to the language, such as the ability
>to express rules, on our radar screen?  Some of the use cases
>that I am interested (e.g., representing security policies)
>will eventually require encoding some rules.

rules are explicitely out of our charter.  There is a forum 
(www-rdf-rules) for discussing rules and query, and the feeling in 
W3C leadership was that consensus on the "structural" part of the 
ontology (my word - by it I mean the class/subclass/property part of 
the world) was much stronger than in the rules world.  It is expected 
that if rules/query stuff reaches a consensus informally, they will 
come to W3C with a request for their own WG.  One might or might not 
agree as to whether this was the right way to do things, but the 
charter lists the following things as out of bounds, and on this our 
hands are tied
  -JH
p.s. Note to web service use case group -- the last one of these also 
applies in some sense to Web services - we are not trying to come up 
with primitives for web services or any specific web-service related 
content.  Showing how webont enhances ability to do things with web 
services, however, is clearly within our charter to develop use cases 
and requirements.



>     *  Query Rules and query langauges  A serious rule language that 
>can be used for complex inferencing, exchange of proofs, and/or the 
>querying of RDF or Web Ontology documents or repositories is 
>desirable to the eventual development of the semantic web, but out 
>of the scope of the current working group. However, this effort will 
>coordinate with any rule or query working groups that may be 
>constituted as part of the semantic web effort.
>     * Universal Web Logics Much discussion on www-rdf-logic@w3.org 
>has focused on a universal web logic (UWL) -- the possibility of 
>creating a usable logic that can express any possible web content. 
>There is discussion as to whether this is feasible (or even 
>possible) and as to what features this language might have. The goal 
>of this working group is explicitly not to define such a universal 
>system, but rather a more limited system of immediate use to the web 
>community. The current product may indeed provide a lower layer on 
>which an eventual UWL can be built, but given the expressibility vs. 
>use trade-offs mentioned above, is not expected to be able to 
>directly result in such a logic.
>     * Agent Communication Languages One use of web ontologies and 
>logics is in support of agent-based computing. While the working 
>group will provide products of use to such systems, the explicit 
>design of agent infrastructure is not a working group goal. In 
>particular, a number of Agent Communication Languages have been 
>proposed, and sets of appropriate performatives discussed at great 
>length. Such work is important to the world at large, but out of the 
>scope of this working group.
>
-- 
Prof. James Hendler			Director, Semantic Web and 
Agent Technology
301-405-2696 (phone)		Maryland Information and Network Dynamics Lab
301-405-8488 (fax)		University of Maryland
http://www.cs.umd.edu/~hendler 	College Park, MD 20742

Received on Tuesday, 11 December 2001 16:09:14 UTC