Re: [OWL] annotations and meta-modelling in OWL 1.1

On Jan 9, 2006, at 9:07 AM, Enrico Franconi wrote:

> On 9 Jan 2006, at 14:12, Bijan Parsia wrote:
>>> It is not present in standard conceptual modelling languages (e.g., 
>>> EntityRelationship E/R data model) for historical reasons (they came 
>>> before SQL). It has a minor presence in UML (the association with a 
>>> diamond at one end) - but UML was not conceived as a database 
>>> conceptual modelling language. There is *plenty* of proposals for 
>>> extension of the E/R data model (and for UML) to model conceptually 
>>> aggregations, and all the conceptual modelling tools I know about 
>>> have some (non-standard) hook to model aggregation.
>>
>> With no clear winner. We're not talking overall utility or 
>> significance, but what has the right balance between utility, ease of 
>> marketing, and easy implementability. For *1.1*, treading where there 
>> is non-standardness elsewhere seems a little off target. Plus, there 
>> is no proposal on the table.
>>
>> (This seems critical to OWL 2.0 as is a more elaborate form of 
>> metamodeling, but it doesn't seem to be a nigh trivial win.)
>
> I'd like to emphasise my point of view:
>
> 1) aggregation as meta-modelling facility is ubiquitous and very 
> relevant for conceptual modelling.
>
> 2) Nonetheless, I believe that OWL-DL is not at the stage of devising 
> a *standard* supporting properly meta-modelling for aggregation, since 
> there has been little discussion about that. My favourite proposal 
> would stem (of course!) from [1] (top hit in 
> <http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=franconi%20sattler>, with 34 
> citations), already implemented in ICOM.
>
> 3) If an extension to OWL-DL supporting aggregation will ever see the 
> light, I'm sure that there will be a widespread use of it.

Sounds like with completely agree.

>> I think ICOM is a wonderful tool, but what I *don't* see is that it, 
>> or things like it, are widely used. My *personal* strategy would be 
>> to revive ICOM and try to build a user base for it (or get one of the 
>> vendors to sell it).
>
> We are coming out with a wonderful new release (how many times have I 
> already said that?:-))

Heh. Cool. I'd love to see it.

> Compatible with OWL etc. But, we killed the aggregation part - lack of 
> time :-(

That seems to be dispositive. (True for SPARQL too.)

>>>  I wonder whether people in the SWBP WG came up with such a 
>>> modelling requisite.
>>
>> Good question.
>
> Ehi: somebody from SWBP out there?

Going over their home page, I don't see anything. It might be worth 
putting together an XG on aggregation and metamodeling for the semantic 
web. I.e., something with a bit more structure charged with coming up 
with a consensus set of proposals.

Some of this will perhaps be addressed in the RIF (or punted there, 
again).

Cheers,
Bijan.

Received on Monday, 9 January 2006 14:18:08 UTC