Re: FORTH COMMENTS ON RDF Schema: Last Call

Hi,

in reply to FORTH COMMENTS ON RDF Schema: Last Call and Pat Hayes comments to it.
I want to concentrate my comments on Class Cycles. The corresponding parts are also attatched at the 
end of this mail.

 
Class Cycles:
For merging different RDF Schemas, I think it is needed to be able to
declare classes to be equal. There are different ways to define classes to
be equal. Either you allow cycles in class hierarchies or you define a
special property. In OWL we can find the property owl:sameClassAs (which is
a subproperty of rdfs:subClassOf) for denoting that two classes have the
same meaning and the instances should belong to both classes.

Additional we can find the property owl:sameAs, which is not related to
other properties.

In all cases we can encounter the problem of miss usage, especially when the
class hierarchy is defined in multiple namespaces.

When defining a cycle via rdfs:subClassOf this can result in the statement
that many classes are equal, e.g.,

            ns2:Class2  rdfs:subClassOf  ns1:Class1

            ns3:Class3  rdfs:subClassOf  ns2:Class2

            ns4:Class4  rdfs:subClassOf  ns3:Class3

            ns4:Class5  rdfs:subClassOf  ns4:Class4

            ns6:Class6  rdfs:subClassOf  ns4:Class5

            ns1:Class1  rdfs:subClassOf  ns6:Class6

This would mean that the last triple will state that all classes (Class1 -
Class 6) are equal. Since owl:sameClassAs is a subproperty of
rdfs:subClassOf and we use owl:sameClassAs inside a hierarchy we could infer
the cycle. Exchanging the last triple above with:

            ns1:Class1  owl:sameClassAs  ns6:Class6

the last triple could be inferred.

If this was used by mistake the hole class hierarchy will loose their
semantic meaning, since they are all equal. Therefore cycles should be
handles with care.

The question is can we figure out if it is a miss usage and therefore an
error or is it done on purpose? The main aim for the property
rdfs:subClassOf is to build up a hierarchy. This property is and will be
used for it. In the beginning it was not allowed to build cycles. When using
the owl:sameClassAs explicit, we know that the author of the RDF Schema had
in mind to state that at least two classes should be equal. The probability
that the given statements are correct is higher than just using the
rdfs:subClassOf property. This means when encountering a cycle in the class
definitions (including inferred rdfs:subClassOf definitions), we need to
find at least one time the owl:sameClassAs property inside the cycle. It
would therefore be worth to introduce a similar property to the RDF Schema
vocabulary.

But note there will stay some drawbacks:
1. There is no mechanism to forbid such kind of inferences, and
therefore to exclude non valid class equivalance, if we are
purely based on automated RDF/S processing of numerous schemas and
descriptions on the Web.

2. Inferring class equivalance using the above mechanism (using cycles) do not scale
for numerous and voluminous schemas since an RDF/S processor is
forced to fetch and analyze all the involved class hierarchies
each time a new subsumption relationship is added.

3. Efficient access methods to class subsumption graphs with cycles
can hardly be supported. 

 

Another way of protecting from miss usage would be the introduction of a
property like owl:sameAs, not related to rdfs:subClassOf. This way cycles in
rdfs:subClassOf will not be inferred. The question is what happens if two
classes inside one class hierarchy are related by rdfs:subClassOf and then
used with owl:sameAs? In this case I think the cycle would make sense. But
will this really happen? This could be constrained to be restricted, e.g.,

            ns2:Class2  rdfs:subClassOf  ns1:Class1

            ns2:Class2  owl:sameAs  ns1:Class1

Would not be valid.

My personal suggestion: I would prefer to have a property like
owl:sameClassAs that would be mandatory to exist inside valid
rdfs:subClassOf cycles. But the noted drawbacks 1-3 will stay. I think it
is worth to think about and explore futher ways. 
 
Karsten
_________________________________________________________________________________
 
FORTH COMMENTS on Class Cycles and Pat Hayes comments to it.

>  Class Cycles
>
>  Finally, contrary to the new RDFS specification and the RDF Semantics,
>  the RQL formal model forbids the existence of cycles in the
>  subsumption hierarchies. Cycles are also allowed in DAML+OIL and
>  OWL. According to these specifications if a resource is declared to be
>  an instance of one classes in a subsumption cycle, then it will also
>  be an instance of all the other classes of the cycle. In other words,
>  all classes participating in the cycle will have the same
>  extent.

That is correct.

>Thus, cycles in a subsumption hierarchy are mainly used to
>  provide different names for the same (meta)class or property.

I think this is slightly misleading. The central point is less that 
cycles are *used* to provide equivalent names - that would indeed be 
rather a silly way to use them deliberately - but rather more that 
when putting together pieces of information from divergent sources, 
one might *discover* that two different hierarchies have the 
conclusion, when put together, that some classes are in fact all the 
same class.

>The
>  rationale behind this modeling choice is the inference of class
>  equivalence. However, the introduction of cycles may considerably
>  affect the semantics of already created RDF/S schemas and resource
>  descriptions, especially when the subclass declarations are provided
>  in many, different namespaces.

I am not sure what you mean. The point is not that cycles will be 
introduced, but that they will be discovered. Once discovered, one 
has two options: to consider this an error, or to consider it a 
discovery.

>Once more, declaring versus inferring
>  class equivalences is more preferable for developers mastering the
>  semantics of their applications.

Is your point that it should be impossible to infer class equivalences?

Thanks for your help in clarifying your points.

Pat Hayes


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Karsten Tolle