Re: [OEP]Re: A suggestion to the n-ary relation draft

Jeff,

This is precisely the kind of subjective commentary we want to avoid by 
not discussing any of the *myriad* of other languages that support n-ary 
predicates, or - most importantly - what might make one "distinguished" 
over another and thus worthy of mention.

Our criterion is simple: we are discussing OWL and RDF. 

-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/



"Jeff Pan" <pan@cs.man.ac.uk> 
02/14/2005 05:32 AM

To
Christopher Welty/Watson/IBM@IBMUS
cc
"Diego Calvanese" <calvanese@inf.unibz.it>, 
<public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org>, "swbp" <public-swbp-wg@w3.org>, "Natasha 
Noy" <noy@SMI.Stanford.EDU>
Subject
[OEP]Re:  A suggestion to the n-ary relation draft






Chris,

> THere are a lot of languages that support n-ary relations.  We have 
> decided that the note will not attempt to catalog them. 

There might be many such languages, but DLR is distinguished because it is 
DL-based and is very well studied in the DL community. In other words, it 
is one of the low hanging fruits. 

More importantly, DLR provides an answer to the question that we are 
interested in: How do we represent relationships among more than two 
individuals? Its answer consists of two aspects. Firstly, users can use 
n-ary relations in DLR. Secondly, KB satisfiability in DLR can be reduced 
to that of OWL DL (in fact ALCIQ, a sub-language of OWL DL). Therefore, 
existing OWL DL/SHIQ reasoners (e.g. FaCT and Racer) can be used to 
provide reasoning support for DLR ontologies. 

IMHO, the n-ary relation draft would be much less valuable if it does not 
cover DLR in reasonable details. 

Greetings,
Jeff

--
Dr. Jeff Z. Pan  ( http://DL-Web.man.ac.uk/ )
School of Computer Science, The University of Manchester



>However, a 
> reference to Degiacomo's work will probably be appropriate in the 
section 
> on further reading, as I recall he used the same approach as one of the 
> patterns in the note.



 
> -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/
> 
> 
> 
> "Jeff Z. Pan" <pan@cs.man.ac.uk> 
> Sent by: public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org
> 02/08/2005 10:25 AM
> 
> To
> Natasha Noy <noy@SMI.Stanford.EDU>
> cc
> swbp <public-swbp-wg@w3.org>
> Subject
> A suggestion to the n-ary relation draft
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Hi Natasha,
> 
> In case no one mentioned that before - there is a DL called DLR that 
> supports
> n-ary relations. Knowledge satisfiability in DLR can be reduced into 
that 
> of
> ALCIQ (a sub-language of SHIQ). Details about reasoning on UML class 
> diagrams using DLR can be found
> in [1]. More details of DLR can be found in chapters of DL Handbook 
[2,3] 
> 
> and earlier papers (e.g. [4]).
> 
> It could be a good idea to have DLR mentioned in the draft. 
> 
> Greetings,
> Jeff
> 
> 
> [1] http://www.dl.kr.org/adl2001/ki01dlws-papers/Berardi-et-al-01.ps.gz
> 
> [2] @InCollection{CaDe03,
>   author =       "Diego Calvanese and De Giacomo, Giuseppe",
>   title =        "Expressive Description Logics",
>   editor =       "Franz Baader and Diego Calvanese and Deborah 
> McGuinness and
>                   Daniele Nardi and Peter F. Patel-Schneider",
>   booktitle =    "The Description Logic Handbook: {T}heory, 
> Implementation and
>                   Applications",
>   publisher =    CUP,
>   year =         2003,
>   chapter =      5,
>   pages =        "178--218",
> }
> 
> [3] @InCollection{BoLR03,
>   author =       "Alexander Borgida and Maurizio Lenzerini and Riccardo 
> Rosati",
>   title =        "Description Logics for Data Bases",
>   editor =       "Franz Baader and Diego Calvanese and Deborah 
> McGuinness and
>                   Daniele Nardi and Peter F. Patel-Schneider",
>   booktitle =    "The Description Logic Handbook: {T}heory, 
> Implementation and
>                   Applications",
>   publisher =    CUP,
>   year =         2003,
>   chapter =      16,
>   pages =        "462--484",
> }
> 
> [4] @InProceedings{CaDL98,
>   author =       "Diego Calvanese and De Giacomo, Giuseppe and
>                   Maurizio Lenzerini",
>   title =        "On the Decidability of Query Containment under 
> Constraints",
>   booktitle =    PODS-98,
>   year =         1998,
>   pages =        "149--158",
> }
> 
> 
> --
> Dr. Jeff Z. Pan  ( http://DL-Web.man.ac.uk/ )
> School of Computer Science, The University of Manchester
> 
> 
>