lack of support for claims regarding Concise Bounded Descriptions

>From the abstract of http://www.w3.org/Submission/2005/SUBM-CBD-20050603/

	This document [1] defines a concise bounded description of a
	resource in terms of an RDF graph, as a general and *broadly
	optimal* [emphasis added] unit of specific knowledge about that
	resource to be utilized by, and/or interchanged between, semantic
	web agents.

The other uses of optimal in the document are:

In "Introduction":

	As the semantic web [2] emerges and the behavior of automated
	software agents becomes increasingly directed by formally defined
	knowledge about resources [3] gathered from disparate sources [4],
	the need for optimal and consistent interchange of knowledge about
	specific resources between agents becomes critical to achieving an
	efficient, globally scalable, and ubiquitous semantic web.

	This document defines a concise bounded description of a resource
	in terms of an RDF graph [5], as a general and broadly optimal unit
	of specific knowledge about that resource to be utilized by, and/or
	interchanged between, semantic web agents.

	[...]

	Optimality is, of course, application dependent and it is not
	presumed that a concise bounded description is an optimal form of
	description for every application; however, it is presented herein
	as a reasonably general and broadly optimal form of description for
	many applications, and unless otherwise warranted, constitutes a
	reasonable default response to the request "tell me about this
	resource".

In "Alternative Forms of Description":

	As has been mentioned above, it is expected that some applications
	may find other forms of resource description more optimal than a
	concise bounded description. The following are some possible
	alternative forms of description which can be seen as derivations
	of the basic form of concise bounded description described above,
	which may be more suitable for particular applications. These
	alternative forms of description are not, however, considered to be
	as general or broadly optimal as a concise bounded description.

I thus find nowhere in the document any support for the claim that concise
bounded descriptions are optimal, broadly or otherwise.

Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research

Received on Sunday, 5 June 2005 13:46:40 UTC