Re: Missing AllDisjoint?

I am hoping some new information could persuade the group to consider a
construct "owl:allDisjoint". Quote

  The only thing going for owl:disjointUnionOf is that it uses
  fewer triples than the alternative. However almost all disjoint
  unions are small so the number of owl:disjointWith triples will not
  be that large. [...] 

Please consider constructing an ontology for the terms described at
http://xml.coverpages.org/UBL-Library-0p64-xsd-display.html. That
document describes 337 terms describing business concepts such as
"PartyType" and "ShippingContact". These terms describe mutually
disjoint classes; a PartyType can never be a ShippingContact and vice
versa. 

A reasoner confronted with classifying an individual among these terms
may not be able to answer some questions unless the classes be declared
disjoint. Even if the disjointness of some of these classes follows as a
consequence of other statements, the reasoner must expend a lot of
energy proving that; in my experience to an impossible degree. So we
need to be able to declare the classes disjoint.

For the 337 terms in our hypothetical UBL Library ontology, we would
enter 56616 <owl:disjointWith> statements. Using the proposed
<owl:allDisjoint> syntax would require 337 statements. 

I bring the UBL library to your attention because it represents a broad
class of business terminology problems the group may not have
considered. This library will be used in conjunction with other
libraries, so the number of terms to distinguish in applications will be
far larger than 337.

Dan mentions that the working group rejected the <owl:disjointUnionOf>
construct. I do not propose reconsidering that decision.
<owl:allDisjoint> is a different construct, one similar in motivation to
that behind <owl:allDifferent>.

Regards,

Hugh Winkler

BetweenMarkets, Inc.

Received on Thursday, 28 August 2003 09:50:13 UTC