Re: ISSUE-52 (Explanations): Specification of OWL equivalences and rewriting rules for explaining inferences

From: Bijan Parsia <bparsia@cs.man.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: ISSUE-52 (Explanations): Specification of OWL equivalences and rewriting rules for explaining inferences
Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 16:28:29 +0000

> On 5 Nov 2007, at 16:02, Kashyap, Vipul wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> > [VK] See my clarification in the e-mail before. A standardized way  
> > of reporting
> > proofs will be a very useful feature for tool and application  
> > interoperability
> > in the context of ontology building.
> 
> Speaking as an API contributer and tool builder (Swoop, OWLSight, OWL  
> API, Protege4, Pellet, FaCT++) working specifically in this area, I  
> do not, at this time, want or need these features from this working  
> group. I don't think it's useful at this time to standardize these  
> features. And I don't think this WG is the right place to standardize  
> it. The DIG group is a better place, by and large.
> 
> Cheers,
> Bijan.

I'm with Bijan here.

I really don't see a need for the OWL 1.1 spec to include a way of
passing around even just proofs.  If at some future time there come to
be a need for passing around full proofs in a standard format (and I'm
certainly not convinced that there will ever be such a need), then that
would be most appropriately the subject of some other specification.

Consider the problems in making a proof language part of OWL 1.1.  If
the proof language has meaning as part of an ontology then the WG has to
design syntax, devise semantics, translate it into RDF, etc.  Some of
these are hard problems.  If the proof language doesn't have meaning as
part of an ontology, then it shouldn't be in an ontology at all, and the
WG shouldn't be working on it.

peter

Received on Monday, 5 November 2007 16:51:27 UTC