Re: OWL 2.0 ...

Hi Jim,
 
What I dearly miss in OWL is the concept of a spatio-temporal ontology,
where a clear distinction is made between:
-  "class" as a type with criteria for membership
-  "individual" existing in space and time
 
A class can be a specialization (subClassOf) of one or more other classes.
 
An individual can be a member of one or more classes, and that membership
starts at some point in time and ends at a later point in time.
 
An individual can be composed of other individuals, connected to other
individuals, contain other individuals, identified with (e.g.) a tag number,
part number, SSN, etc., and these Properties are starting to be valid at
some point in time and ending at some later point in time.
 
An individual has a limited lifetime, a class is eternal (the class
PlayStation existed already at the Big Bang, only there were no people
around to discover it, and at that time there were no members yet, just as
at present there are no members yet of the class "commercial fusion
reactor").
 
The lack of distinction to me, coming from my paradigm, is bewildering when
I try to understand example ontology listings. When reading the "wine"
example in the Guide I have difficulty to understand when a kind of wine is
meant and when actual wine that you can pour in your glass.
 
In the eBusiness catalogs the class-only concept works, but in asset
management not, at least not with great difficulty.
 
This is probably not the kind of input you had in mind, but to us this is
important.
 
Regards,
Hans
 
____________________________
Hans Teijgeler
co-author of ISO 15926-2 <http://www.infowebml.ws/ECM4.5/ECM4.5.html> 
author of ISO 15926-7
website www.InfowebML.ws <http://www.infowebml.ws/> 
e-mail hans.teijgeler@quicknet.nl
phone +31-72-509 2005