Re: ACTION-129 and ACTION-132

On 7 May 2008, at 11:05, Michael Schneider wrote:

> [related to ISSUE-67 and ISSUE-81]
>
> Bijan Parsia wrote:
>
>> Are done enough for me:
> [...]
>> 	http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/Reification_Alternatives
>
> [[
>   Technique                 Issues
>   ---------------------------------------
>   Reification               Current solution; people don't like  
> reification
>   Reification shadow vocab  Doesn't really improve things over base
> reification
> ]]
>
> An addition: From what I have heard, people do not simply /dislike/  
> RDF
> reification. This alone would not be a valid reason to not use this  
> feature
> within OWL. (I have even heard rumors about inconvincible people  
> who dislike
> OWL. ;-))

Love, I can see. Hate, I can see. But this wimpy "dislike" is *la-ame*.

> I remember having heard several times that many people would like  
> to change
> the semantics of RDF reification, or even drop it completely from  
> the RDF
> spec.

Well, I can think of lots of things I'd like to change about or drop  
from RDF. It seems rough to have to predict what might happen based  
not on definite plans, but on vague rumblings.

I'm not sure how it can be "dropped" per se. Surely legacy  
considerations will force it to be maintained.

> This would then directly hit OWL. Or the other way around: Having RDF
> reification in OWL would be a high barrier for a future RDF WG to  
> change or
> drop RDF reification.

I think it's more likely that a new, nicer alternative will come  
along. In which case, a future OWL WG might want to update to that.

> It is exactly this issue which would be precluded by using a shadow
> vocabulary.

But now consider the other direction: No one drops or changes RDF  
reification. Now, instead of one reification vocabulary, we have two  
(and only one  has special syntax support).

I can see you line as an argument for some other technique. But a  
shadow vocabulary doesn't solve any technical issues with the triple  
at a time style of reification and raises the hackles of pro- 
reification (and anti-vocabulary proliferation) people.

In other words, it's a cheap (yay) but only nominal fix that raises  
as many (potential) problems as it (potentially) solves.

Cheers,
Bijan.

Received on Wednesday, 7 May 2008 10:17:21 UTC