- From: <tim.glover@bt.com>
- Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2007 10:43:05 +0100
- To: <henry.story@bblfish.net>
- Cc: <semantic-web@w3.org>
Henry wrote: >>>>> In logic programming you could always write something like Bachelor(x) :- Unamarried(x), Man(x) . But you knew that someone else could define those terms differently so you could not merge the work from different groups easily, even if you thought it was of the highest quality. The semantic web takes this global naming seriously, and makes it clear how all these technologies can work together, how they can be integrated. Neither UML, MOF, nor SQL nor prolog nor any of the other languages made this clear. <<<<< Well I agree that the major problem of data integration is the fact that people use the same words in subtly different ways. But can someone please explain to me, how does putting http://xyz in front of all the names help? "...someone else could define those terms differently..." If you mean by giving a different human interpretation of these words, that is beyond the scope of the semantic web. If you mean by writing alternative, inconsistent statements about bachelors and marriage, I have heard repeatedly that that is perfectly acceptable, if not positively encouraged! Is it because people who want to use a different definition can use a different URI? But how do they KNOW that their definition is the same or different from someone else's? The difference in meaning lies precisely in the use people make of the words. What is to stop me and a colleague across the planet from innocently and with the best of intentions using the URI in different ways, each believing that what we are doing is correct in our own context? And having used different URIs, how do we integrate that part of our knowledge we agree on? Perhaps the answer is something to do with dereferencing? Well it was recently pointed out on this thread that a dictionary is a mechanism for dereferencing ordinary names to content. But you seem to believe that this does not solve the problem for ordinary words. Why is the web logically different from a very partial dictionary, where most of the entries are in Chinese? Sorry to be so dense :( Tim.
Received on Monday, 6 August 2007 09:43:22 UTC