Re: [OWL-S]Avoiding Lists

> [Bijan Parsia]
> 3) DRS may make use of lists in describing formulas.
> 
> Disposing these in reverse order:
> 
> 3) If DRSyly described preconditions and effect formulas are associated 
> with a process by a datatype property whose values are XMLLiterals that 
> contain the RDF/XML for the DRS formulas, then the parent KB will be in 
> OWL DL even if the literals themselves are OWL Full. I think it would 
> be better if it were DL all the way down, but hey. It's a compromise :)

This won't work because, even though XML literals should be legal as
atomic formulas, they aren't the only kind of atomic formulas.  The
only things worth hiding via XML are RDF triples.  Atomic formulas
with more than two arguments will still be represented as entities
with lists of terms.  In addition, conjunctions and disjunctions are
also implemented as classes whose properties are lists of formulas.

> ....
> Ok, but what can we do instead of 1 or 2. Some choices:
> 
> a) Define a shadow collection vocabulary, e.g., owls:List and friends. 
> ... The big loss is that in OWL-DL compatible kbs, 
> you couldn't use the parseType="Collection" short cut ...

We could generalize parseType="Collection" so it mentioned which 
kind of list it was generating:

<Conjunction>
   <conn_args parseType="Collection" 
              emptyCol="pnil" listRest="prest" listFirst="pfirst">
      ...
   </conn_args>
</Conjunction>

Here pfirst : prest : pnil :: first : rest : nil 
are the shadow collection vocabulary.  (The silent "p" is for
"Parsia.") 

> (note, you 
> already can't do this for lists of datavalues). Well, boo hoo. We could 
> publish an XSLT sheet that took care of this.

Or a translator from a non-XML notation to XML that saved humans from
ever having to look at angle brackets.

> Any thoughts, preferences, screams of pain anyone would like to share?

If I succumbed to the temptation to scream every time something in
RDF/Owl bothered me, they would have carted me off to the asylum years
ago.

                                             -- Drew


-- 
                                             -- Drew McDermott
                                                Yale University CS Dept.

Received on Wednesday, 4 February 2004 14:18:21 UTC