Re: What is it that's wrong with rdf:List [summary]

Michael Schneider wrote:
> Here is my estimation:
>
> AFAIR, the OWL Working Group *postponed* the issue to allow RDF lists in OWL
> 2 DL (see [1]), since it did not know how to handle RDF lists in the reverse
> OWL 2 Mapping to RDF Graphs [2]. 
>
> I guess, if someone would take that job on himself to analyze the RDF
> mapping and finds out how to extend it to (more or less) general list usage
> without breaking the mapping and without making it considerably more
> complicated, then there would be a chance to get RDF lists into OWL DL in a
> future version. 

Michael

I think this points to the underlying social issue here.
"if someone would take that job"

That someone has to be committed to RDF - taking just an OWL DL point 
of  view, the job is pointless.
 From the OWL mentality, the right way to serialize OWL is as OWL/XML or 
Functional Syntax, so if you want a user level list just introduce 
my:List and be done with it.
The only reason for wnating rdf:List to work is to get 'nice' 
serialization in RDF/XML and N3 and to have RDF  level list support.

That someone has to be commited to OWL DL - taking just an RDF point of 
view, the job is pointless.
DL reasoners are way too slow for the sort of tasks that people with an 
RDF mindset are interested in, OWL DL really just doesn't get it, from 
this mindset.

That someone has to be pretty clever and committed - the mapping rules 
are not for the faint hearted!

That someone has to be pretty cheap, or have a wealthy and slightly 
foolish employer. This is not an easy task, and will take quite some 
effort. Since it has little economic value, the person doing the work 
needs to be on a lot less than $2K a week.

So, we have reduced the set of possible candidates for this task to 
naive PhD students who don't know better, and are too new to the field 
to have prejudices of their own. It is a struggle for them to achieve 
the stature necessary to carry consensus (it can be done, but ...)

Definitely a possible project for a student intern in a large corporate 
research department - ah, but the large corporate with the biggest 
semantic web research effort, stopped funding that ...

Thus, I don't expect any change in this area any time soon.

Jeremy

Received on Monday, 21 June 2010 15:08:57 UTC