Re: draft public comment for OWL last call from RIF

Bijan,

While RIF and OWL are clearly different, and have different goals, they are also 
very similar, and there is a significant portion of the world that views them 
that way.  (Recently, giving a RIF talk, I was asked "So which do I use, OWL or 
RIF?"  I did not perceive from the rest of the audience any indication that this 
seemed a ridiculous question.)

So while you see no strong argument to have the same set of datatypes, I see no 
strong argument *not* to make them the same, quite the opposite in fact - it 
seems plainly obvious to me they should be the same.  You have given no strong 
argument here, other than your own personal motivations.

And I do not think it futile - if you believe its non-futile and should be the 
job of one working group to formally designate a set of datatypes, then it is 
certainly possible for two working group to do it, albeit the amount of work 
increases by an order of magnitude which I don't relish.  None the less, I see 
this as our responsibility.

We do seem to agree that the set of datatypes should have the same semantics. 
This makes me think I should send two message from RIF, one on the different 
semantics and one on the common set of datatypes.

-Chris

Bijan Parsia wrote:
> On 22 Jan 2009, at 23:18, Chris Welty wrote:
> 
>> Bijan,
>>
>> I don't undersand what "it" refers to below in "it's futile".
> 
> The hope that we can have "one set" of datetypes for the semantic web. 
> I'm introducing a new set of quantity datatypes for OWL. I don't intend, 
> myself, to do anything with regard to them for RIF. I expect them to be 
> eventually standardized by the W3C. I'm very unclear why "one set" is 
> required for non-ridiculousness.
> 
>> The decisions to support (or not support) a datatype in the RIF 
>> discussions has typically been grounded in the implementation burden 
>> vs. utility tradeoff.
> 
> As with OWL. But given that OWL and RIF are different languages with 
> different purposes, it doesn't seem wildly unlikely that there would be 
> different burden/utility tradeoffs.
> 
> For example, RIF is focused on rule exchange and (properly) should focus 
> on existing implementations. OWL is focused on modeling and thus often 
> needs to expand the capability of implementations. (This is a 
> simplification of course, but I trust that the basic point is clear).
> 
> I don't even see a strong argument to restrict OWL RL to what RIF can 
> handle. I don't see why it isn't enough to point out that some datatypes 
> aren't RIF standard. If there's enough demand for them, then I presume 
> RIF vendors will add them.
> 
> (Having relevantly the same semantics for the same datatypes is, IMHO, a 
> very compelling consideration. Having the same set of datatypes isn't. 
> And has no precedent in semantic web specs thus far. RDF has only 
> XMLLiteral. OWL 1 didn't require support for it.)
> 
> Cheers,
> Bijan.
> 

-- 
Dr. Christopher A. Welty                    IBM Watson Research Center
+1.914.784.7055                             19 Skyline Dr.
cawelty@gmail.com                           Hawthorne, NY 10532
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/w/welty

Received on Friday, 23 January 2009 14:20:44 UTC