Re: Are DeprecatedClasses invisible to DIG Reasoners?

Well, I hope we don't need to wait too long as the ability to manage change 
is a prerequisite to establishing value in many if not most applications, 
and it's a big part of our reason for being in Kyield, although not the only 
one. - MM

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Matthew Pocock" <matthew.pocock@ncl.ac.uk>
To: "William Bug" <William.Bug@drexelmed.edu>
Cc: "Ibach, Brandon L" <brandon.l.ibach@lmco.com>; <public-owl-dev@w3.org>
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2007 2:55 PM
Subject: 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 22:04:11 UTC