RE: syntax task force - differences between the two approaches

On Thu, 27 Feb 2003, Ian Horrocks wrote:

>
> On February 27, Jeremy Carroll writes:
> >
> > > The alternative presentation, particularly the approach to equivalence
> > > and disjointness is, to me, less clear.
> >
> > The earlier complexities have gone from the version:
> >
> > http://sealpc09.cnuce.cnr.it/jeremy/owl-syntax/2003-21-Feb/dl-syntax.html
> >
> > Peter had indicated that he saw semantic difficulties with my earlier
> > proposal, and I saw that he was right.
> >
> > The difference on equivalent classes and disjointness is now simply how to
> > treat n>2 in such statements, which I don't think is unsuromountable.
>
> This kind of thing *is* important when it comes to building
> tools. E.g., OilEd allows users to assert that a set of classes are
> disjoint - something that is a pretty common requirement. If saving
> the file as RDF means decomposing such statements into pairwise
> disjointness axioms, then when the RDF is read back in it is
> impossible to know which if any of these should be re-grouped.
>
> For users, the result is that every time they go through a
> save-restore cycle they find all their disjointness axioms
> have fragmented. This can be both irritating and confusing.
>
> I don't think that we give/have given anything like enough
> consideration to these sorts of practical/implementation
> considerations in our design.

Dan [1] replied to the issue of multiple disjoints/equivalences as raised
in [2]. I am unsure as to what the resolution to "postpone the rest" means
in practical terms.

	Sean

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-webont-wg/2003Feb/0318.html
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-webont-wg/2003Feb/0317.html

-- 
Sean Bechhofer
seanb@cs.man.ac.uk
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~seanb

Received on Thursday, 27 February 2003 12:13:27 UTC