Re: Are DeprecatedClasses invisible to DIG Reasoners?

Perhaps in future, we will need to produce syntax/semantics for managing 
change in ontologies? It's a shame that we have to remove the old (possibly 
broken) axioms when the new ones come along and especially a shame that we 
have to do URI hackery, which in some senses breaks the contract between the 
concept and the URI (assuming the new definition more correctly identifies 
the instances of a concept).

Some combination of URI versioning, and reasoner support so that 'past' axioms 
don't trigger a full unsatisfiable ontology condition? Now my brain hurts.

C'est la vie.

Matthew

On Monday 20 August 2007, William Bug wrote:
> Thanks, Brandon.
>
> Yes - that makes the most sense, and as you say, is commensurate with
> the use of deprecation - as in Java - thus leaving it to an
> application to decide how to present this info to a user.  For
> instance, Protege adds a dark red "D" superscript to deprecated
> classes - just as information to the user.  This software development
> analogy is made in the OWL specs as well.
>
> Now I more fully understand why the biomedical ontology community
> associated with the OBO Foundry and Gene Ontology are not using
> owl:DeprecatedClass.  They have the requirement of "retiring"/
> deprecating a class when it was necessary to make changes that alter
> the semantic entailments of the class or its associated axioms.  The
> recommended practice is to clone the old class - giving it a new
> unique rdf:ID.  The older class is re-typed to a generic
> "_deprecated_class" and all its axioms are removed, so it will be
> opaque to reasoners - apart from the class axiom typing it as a
> "_deprecated_class".  The newly made clone then is used to make the
> changes that alter the underlying entailments associated with that
> class.
>
> I was just trying to better understand how owl:DeprecatedClass
> relates to this practice.  The answer appears to be - it doesn't.
>
> Thanks again.
>
> Cheers,
> Bill

Received on Monday, 20 August 2007 21:56:13 UTC