Re: ISSUE-55 (owl:class)

My request in raising the issue was that if we postponed it, we  
needed a clear statement as to why the problem exists (and several  
people have suggested adding the note that many reasoners change  
rdfs:class to owl:class despite the semantic issue) -- saying "  
introduces significant and not fully understood technical  
difficulties" does not satisfy what I asked this issue to be  
addressed for.  Again, in studies of ontologies out there, a great  
many OWL Full ontologies become OWL DL with this change, I would  
think that it would therefore be incumbent on this group to either  
encourage those users to use owl:class (by explaining why they  
should) or make it clear they can still work with OWL DL tools if  
they don't, but there are certain techniical risks (which I must  
admit I still don't understand)
  So if we postpone this issue, which I'm okay with, it requires an  
explanation - and that is where I think we (the OWL community) has  
failed to date.   In fact, I've been suggesting to my students that  
they use rdfs:class in many applications since OWL DL tools fix it,  
and RDF-only tools don't reject it...  this is clearly wrong  
semantically (Which I explain to the best of my limited ability) but  
right from a practical point of view...
   -JH




On Dec 1, 2007, at 3:07 PM, Ian Horrocks wrote:

>
> I'm tending to postpone this issue on the grounds that it  
> introduces significant and not fully understood technical  
> difficulties.
>

"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would  
it?." - Albert Einstein

Prof James Hendler				http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~hendler
Tetherless World Constellation Chair
Computer Science Dept
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY 12180