RE: [OEP] OWL and Semantic interoperability

Mike, 

There are a plethora of systems that are more expressive than OWL. 
Mentioning one, or two simply begs the question: "Why didn't you mention 
<my favorite KR system>?"   To avoid this question, simply avoid 
*mentioning* things that are not W3C standards - we have a responsibility 
to cover W3C standards.  We have no responsibility to cover anything else.

I'm not suggesting you avoid talking about any limitations of OWL here - 
quite the opposite.  Point out the pluses and minuses of OWL but stop 
short of recommending, or even implying a recommendation, that someone use 
something else.  The philosophy should be somthing like, "So, you are 
going to use OWL for doing semantic integration - here's what you can and 
cannot do".

-Chris

Dr. Christopher A. Welty, Knowledge Structures Group
IBM Watson Research Center, 19 Skyline Dr., Hawthorne, NY  10532     USA   
 
Voice: +1 914.784.7055,  IBM T/L: 863.7055, Fax: +1 914.784.7455
Email: welty@watson.ibm.com, Web: 
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/w/welty/



"Uschold, Michael F" <michael.f.uschold@boeing.com> 
02/07/2005 03:34 PM

To
Christopher Welty/Watson/IBM@IBMUS
cc
<public-swbp-wg@w3.org>
Subject
RE: [OEP] OWL and Semantic interoperability






Thanks, Chris.
 
I was not going to talk about SWRL, other than to mention that it 
addresses one of the key limitations of OWL for semantic interoperability. 
I think it is quite important to talk about procedural functions such as 
arithmetic and string manipulation because they are important for many 
real-world interoperability solutions. 
 
What is the argument for NOT mentioning this as a key limitation? 
What you you say are the key limitations that ARE worth discussing?
 
Mike
 
Below is a revised outline of the note.
 
This note addresses the role of OWL in overcoming problems of semantic 
heterogeneity.  We briefly characterize what we mean by semantic 
interoperability, and what the challenges are. We describe some OWL 
constructs that are designed to support semantic interoperability and 
illustrate them with examples. We highlight their strengths and 
limitations.  The main strengths are the ability to import, share and 
reuse public ontologies (in whole or part) and the ability to express 
logical equivalence between concepts, properties and individuals in 
different ontologies. The main weakness is the lack of support for 
procedural functions (e.g. arithmetic, string manipulation) that are 
needed for mapping between many real-world ontologies. 
 
The main message is that while OWL provides a basis for achieving semantic 
interoperability in a ceratain range of situations, it is no silver bullet 
for the general problem of achieving semantic interoperability.    The 
main limitations can be addressed by provision of explicit support for 
procedural functions and an expressive rule language.  Such functions are 
not efficient to implement in an inference engine and need to be supported 
using built-ins. Technologies exist that can provide such support (e.g. 
SWRL, Flogic engines); however they are not standards.
OWL is an important  step forward, and there are more steps to go.
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Welty [mailto:welty@us.ibm.com] 
Sent: Monday, February 07, 2005 10:47 AM
To: Uschold, Michael F
Subject: Re: [OEP] OWL and Semantic interoperability
 

Mike, 

I agree with a reduction in negativity on the tone in the abstract, and I 
think procedureally its out of scope to talk about SWRL.  I'd recommend 
sticking to what OWL can and can't do.  Here's a slight rewording for your 
consideration: 

This note addresses the role of OWL in overcoming problems of semantic
heterogeneity.  We briefly characterize what we mean by semantic
interoperability, and what the challenges are. We describe some OWL
constructs that are designed to support semantic interoperability and
illustrate them with examples. We highlight their strengths and
limitations.  The main message is that OWL is no silver bullet for the
general problem of achieving semantic interoperability;  it is 
a step forward, but by no means the final step.

-Chris 

Dr. Christopher A. Welty, Knowledge Structures Group
IBM Watson Research Center, 19 Skyline Dr., Hawthorne, NY  10532     USA   
 
Voice: +1 914.784.7055,  IBM T/L: 863.7055, Fax: +1 914.784.7455
Email: welty@watson.ibm.com, Web: 
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/w/welty/ 


"Uschold, Michael F" <michael.f.uschold@boeing.com> 
Sent by: public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org 
02/04/2005 08:34 PM 


To
<public-swbp-wg@w3.org> 
cc
<rector@cs.man.ac.uk>, Christopher Welty/Watson/IBM@IBMUS 
Subject
[OEP] OWL and Semantic interoperability
 


 
 





At a recent OEP meeting Pat Hayes made some great points, and there was
some good discusion.  The following summarizes what was said, to the
best of my ability. 

*                 many traditional prolbms of semantic interoperability 
will go
away with the Semantic Web, mainly because there is an infrastructure to
support semantic agreements (through publishing ontologies) 
*                 the Semantic Web forces people to think about making 
thing
interoperable more than before, hence things will be better.
*                 problems of semantic interoperability will go away to 
the extent
that people reference and re-use public ontologies in ways that are
consistent with their original intended use.
o                 e.g. FOAF: mailboxOf , DC:author
*                 Semantic Web provides not only the technical capability, 
but the
social motivation to resue concepts, so less translation will be
necessary 
*                 Warning: reusing ontologies is hard, just like reusing 
software
code is hard. People reuse code in the wrong way. The Semantic Web makes
it likely that people will reuse [portions of] ontologies in incorrect
ways too.

Pat: can you please elaborate on this a bit, I'm sure I missed some key
things.

BTW: my current working abstract for the note is:

This note addresses the role of OWL in overcoming problems of semantic
heterogeneity.  We briefly characterize what we mean by semantic
interoperability, and what the challenges are. We describe some OWL
constructs that are designed to support semantic interoperability and
illustrate them with examples. We highlight their strengths and
limitations.  The main message is that OWL is no silver bullet for the
general problem of achieving semantic interoperability.  The support
provided is very limited.  Many of these limitations will be overcome by
the Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) that is currently under
development.


Thanks
Mike