Re: Issues with classification a#b, a##b

<snip/>

>> This still does not answer the question why RIF should introduce its own
>> ontology vocabulary.
> 
> The reason is very simple. In this way RIF will have a standard (from the
> object-oriented point of view) minimalistic theory of class hierarchies.
> Any other theory that has its own subclass mechanisms (like RDF) can be
> hooked up to RIF's theory using the simple rules like
> 
> ?p # ?t :- ?p[rdf:type -> ?t] .
> ?p ## ?t :- ?p[rdfs:subClassOf -> ?t] .
> 
> Thus, the different theories that will be imported into different RIF
> modules will be able to interoperate and integrate their class hierarchies
> through the RIF's simple model.

There are already two standard Semantic Web languages for the purpose of
interoperating and integrating ontological information (including class
hierarchies), namely RDFS and OWL.  I argue that we should use these
languages for expressing and integrating class information, rather than
inventing a new one.
I know that RDF Schema has some features which make the language overly
complex.  However, through syntactical restriction things can be made a
lot easier (e.g. [1], which includes all the standard uses of the RDFS
ontology vocabulary).


Best, Jos

[1] Sergio Muñoz, Jorge Pérez, Claudio Gutiérrez: Minimal Deductive
Systems for RDF. ESWC 2007: 53-67.
http://www.eswc2007.org/pdf/eswc07-munoz.pdf

> 
> 
> 	--michael  
> 
-- 
Jos de Bruijn            debruijn@inf.unibz.it
                      http://www.debruijn.net/
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