Re: interoperability (was Re: isolating shapes in named graphs)

You appear to be arguing against interoperability.

The DBpedia defining documents include an ontology.  Does that commit users of 
DBpedia-minted identifiers to the DBpedia ontology?  If not, why should use of 
foaf:mbox commmit one to the FOAF ontology, or indeed any portion of the FOAF 
definitions?

peter




On 11/26/2014 02:36 PM, Eric Prud'hommeaux wrote:
> * Peter F. Patel-Schneider <pfpschneider@gmail.com> [2014-11-26 07:20-0800]
>> On 11/26/2014 05:46 AM, Eric Prud'hommeaux wrote:
>>> * Peter F. Patel-Schneider <pfpschneider@gmail.com> [2014-11-26 05:11-0800]
>>>> One usually uses an external URI, like foaf:mbox, because one wants
>>>> interoperability of meaning.  However, I do not believe that
>>>> complete interoperability of URI meaning should be mandated.  I also
>>>> do not believe that complete interoperability of URI meaning is
>>>> possible.
>>>>
>>>> Further, I believe that effective interoperability can be achieved
>>>> without mandating use of defining definitions.  For example, I may
>>>> decide that I don't want to use the "static" part of the definition
>>>> of foaf:mbox. Interoperability should remain for most purposes.
>>>>
>>>> Particular commmunities can, if they want,  require stronger
>>>> conditions on shared meaning.  Perhaps it would be possible to set
>>>> up a community that achieves complete interoperability of meaning.
>>>> However, I very strongly believe that "the web" cannot be such a
>>>> community, and thus that W3C recommendations should never mandate
>>>> it.
>>>
>>> It sounds like if I'm not feeling lucky, I should never consume data
>> >from anyone with whom I've not written up some contract. What would
>>> that contract say? "I agree to use the vocabularies according to their
>>> documented semantics. I will not use terms if I don't understand their
>>> semantics."
>>
>> I don't think that you have to have a direct contract with that
>> other party. There could be some out-of-band information about that
>> other party, for example that they are a participant in some
>> community.  There could also be information in documents, such as
>> the use of logical properties, like rdf:type or owl:imports.  Sure a
>> particularly perverse player could use these properties differently
>> than you expect, either intentionally or inadvertently, but using
>> logical properties in a non-standard fashion is something that
>> should only be done, in my view, with great trepidation.
>>
>> (Of course, I'm actually going against web practice here somewhat.
>> There are many situations where logical properties are not used
>> correctly.  Consider owl:sameAs, for example.)
>>
>>>> Merging data from different sources can be problematic even if the
>>>> use of defining definitions is mandated.  Data can be incorrect,
>>>> after all.
>>>
>>> I suspect you are being a bit provocative here,
>>
>> Not at all, I've held this position from the very beginning of my
>> involvement with the semantic web.  I and others have forcefully
>> argued it at various meetings, and have affected W3C recommendations
>> thereby.
>>
>>> and I'm playing along
>>> nicely. Surely we needn't jettison this fine bathwater just because
>>> it's slightly sullied by a baby. It's quite practical to say that I
>>> will respect, or at least not contradict, the properties of foaf:mbox
>>> even if there's an assertion elsewhere in that ontology that the moon
>>> is a subclass of Things made of green cheese. What's the actual
>>> screw-case if I use <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Moon>?
>>
>> Well, you do commit to lots of unusual things in this case.  For
>> starters, there are several minimum and maximum temperatures.
>>
>> If you commit to the DBpedia ontology you get a number of unusual
>> consequences, like Berlin being a mountain and Lambeau Field being a
>> city. You also commit to unusual definitions of many categories.
>> For example, all windmills are buildings, all libraries are
>> educational institutions, chess players are athletes, saints are
>> clerics, baronets are british royalty, professors are scientists.
>
> OK, let's take a fairly pessimal case and utter
>    dbp:Deep_Blue :wonAgainst dbp:Garry_Kasparov .
> and this peculiarly entails that Deep Blue is a dbp:Athlete.
>    dbp:Deep_Blue a dbp:Athlete .
>
> No one will have any problems consuming our little assertion unless
> their logic somehow interacts with the wikipedia hierarchy, in which
> case they're already marrying an ontology with known bugs.
>
>
>> I care about this sort of thing because I want to use the
>> consequences of web information in my systems.  I don't want to have
>> to commit to too much, however.  I also want to be able to commit to
>> some things and see when the sources that I do use have committed to
>> other things.  I certainly don't want to have to commit to the
>> entire web to use any of it.
>>
>> peter
>

Received on Thursday, 27 November 2014 00:27:12 UTC