Re: [OPEN] Guideline for when standard definitions are inadequate (was philosophy of SWBPD (was Re: [OPEN] and/or [PORT] : a practical question))

At 14:45 -0800 3/29/04, Uschold, Michael F wrote:

>Try to use standard definitions where possible, if not, then try to 
>pull out common pieces of both definitions, and make the 
>relationship between them explicit. If that is not possible, then in 
>clear natural language, articulate how the new definition relates to 
>the standard one, as well as why the standard one was inadequate to 
>your purposes.  If you think that there are serious problems with 
>the standard one that warrants being upgraded, then make those 
>recommendations to the appropriate body.
>

I would vote against the publication of any document with those words 
in them, and it is so different from my world view that I'm not even 
sure how to propose rewriting it.  Instead, here's a few questions:

1 - what is a "standard definition"?
2 - What is a "common piece" of "both" definitions (what if I have 10 
of them - in the Air Force Ed Feigenbaum found 14 representations for 
"tail number" - the single thing everyone in the AF agrees that a 
plane has - and everyone of them was in some military standard system)
3 - Which natural language should I use?  Where should I put this - 
in the ontology document itself or on a separate page or why.
4 - What is the appropriate body?  I may have the following 
definition on my RDF home page:
   :felineLuekemia a nci:cancer;
       rdfs:subclassOf
         owl:restriction [
            owl:onproperty nci:organism;
            owl:AllValuesFrom OpenCyc:Cat]
Who do you wish to complain to?  Me? NCI,? Cycorp?  the inventor of 
OWL? the inventor of the Web?  All of them would seem to be the 
appropriate bodies depending on what exactly it was you could not use 
in this definition for you application.

Again, I wish to make it clear -- we're in a new game, with new 
rules, and we haven't had a whole lot of experience, but what 
experience we've had fielding RDF and RDFS applications, as well as 
DAML+OIL and proto-OWL ones, sure makes it clear that some of the old 
issues would be a lot easier if this Semantic Web thing never reared 
its ugly head...



-- 
Professor James Hendler			  http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/hendler
Director, Semantic Web and Agent Technologies	  301-405-2696
Maryland Information and Network Dynamics Lab.	  301-405-6707 (Fax)
Univ of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742	  240-277-3388 (Cell)

Received on Monday, 29 March 2004 19:52:51 UTC