- From: David Martin <martin@AI.SRI.COM>
- Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2004 19:43:12 -0700
- To: public-sws-ig <public-sws-ig@w3.org>
As you (the OWL-S folks) know, for (not-yet-announced) release 1.1, we're removing classes ConditionalEffect and ConditionalOutput from Process.owl (because this info is now carried as part of the new Result object). However, there's a problem: Profile.owl still refers to ConditionalEffect and ConditionalOutput. They are the ranges of profile:hasEffect and profile:hasOutput. This was discussed very briefly in the last telecon. I observed that Profile and Process are no longer in sync with respect to outputs and effects (OEs), and someone put forward that it's OK, because we don't really mean for profiles to carry all the detailed info that Result objects carry. So one solution might be to reinstate ConditionalEffect and ConditionalOutput classes, and just leave the profile properties as they are. However, I find this a problematic solution, because this means that it will be less clear than ever what's the relationship between OEs of the profile and those of the process. This is a recurring issue for us - that it's desirable to have a clear relationship between these. In OWl-S 1.0, we could say that OEs of profile are normally a subset of OE's of the corresponding process. In 1.1, however, if we use different structures for OEs of profile, it won't be possible to make such a clear statement about the relationship. Therefore, it seems better to me that we also use the new Result class to express the OEs of Profile. (That is, we eliminate hasEffect and hasOutput and create profile:hasResult, which runs parallel to process:hasResult.) In this way, it'll be more straightforward to trace the relationships between the OEs of Process and Profile, and reasoning code that looks at the Results of a Process can also be used in looking at the results of a profile. I suspect that for many simple services (certainly those with a single Result), it'll be fine for the Profile to reference the identical Result object as the Process. In cases where the Process has several Result instances, of course, there would be no requirement that all of them be reproduced in the corresponding Profile. In those cases, I suspect that the most common representation would be to reproduce just one of the Result instances from the Process. Personally, I think that approach yields a cleaner picture than having completely different properties and classes used in profile vs. process. Comments? - David
Received on Sunday, 20 June 2004 22:43:45 UTC