Re: imports + metadata

<snip/>

>>> 'import' of a RIF document would merge in the rules in that document
>> No contest here :-)
> 
> [PV>] Allow me. :) 
> Are we talking about RIF, or BLD? I can see why this might be the case
> in BLD, but other dialects (eg PRD) will likely have constraints (eg the
> data schema used, signature of a service for a ruleset being
> interchanged, etc) which means there will me much more work for a
> translator. 
> 
> Now, if there is an assumption "RIF document = ruleset" and "any import
> will be assumed to be set up to use compatible data references" then
> this works fine...

I for one am talking about BLD here. I can imagine that PRD would impose 
additional requirements on imports.

> 
>>> 'importMeta' of a RIF document would merge in the metadata and also
> the
>>>       triples which encode the syntactic structure (which we haven't
>>>       standardized but we should, and Axel made a proposal [1]
>> about importing metadata I don't really have an opinion.  I'm fine
> with
>> it if people think it's useful.
>> I am a little uneasy about importing the syntactic structure of a rule
>> set. I'm afraid it will invite people to work on the (nasty) syntactic
>> level, instead of the (nicer) semantic level.
> 
> [PV>] You've lost me there - surely one imports a document that has both
> syntax and semantics?

if I understood correctly, what Sandro meant here was to import the 
syntax as a set of facts, thereby effectively transforming the RIF document.
For example, one could have a fact
p(a)

In the document.  Importing the syntactic structure of the document 
would yield something like:
x1[type -> atom]
x1[predicate -> p]
x1[argument1 -> a]

>>> 'import' of an OWL XML file [2] or an RDF/XML-file which is an
>>>       owl:Ontology would (conceptually merge in the OWL-DL axioms,
>>>       ignoring all triples not playing a role in the ontology
>> As discussed in the last telephone conference, you have a slightly
>> different intuition behind the combination than I do.  I would rather
>> phrase it in the form of a "data source reference", but would not have
> a
>> big problem with "import".
>>
>> We do have the issue here of deciding how to treat the RDF/XML file.
>> Should we use RDF simple entailment/RDFS/OWL DL/OWL Full?
>> existence of some owl:Ontology triple is not sufficient, because both
>> OWL DL and OWL Full have that.
>>
> [PV>] A typical PRD import could utilize the same XML schema for both
> importer and imported rulesets. Otherwise the translator has a lot of
> XPATH processing to do to convert between schemas, presumably...

here we are not talking about importing rule sets, but the about 
importing ontologies, which have a different syntax.

Best, Jos

<snip/>

-- 
Jos de Bruijn            debruijn@inf.unibz.it
+390471016224         http://www.debruijn.net/
----------------------------------------------
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but
certainty is absurd.
   - Voltaire