example of a non-monotonic inference needed for interpreting the social meaning of RDF in e-commerce

re http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-rdfcore-wg/2003Feb/0164.html
point #7

... and then when you say :

   In contrast, and to illustrate that this condition is nontrivial,
   note that it would clearly be irrational to require the use of an
   invalid inference process to preserve such social meanings.

I am in the process of implementing something strangely similar to your 
example for my online business [1].  I cannot see a way to translate the 
onlinefeed of my catalog as defined by Google [2] into RDF,  such that 
it would *not* require an "invalid inference process" to preserve my 
intended social meaning.    In particular I intend to providing the feed 
to Google in support of their new Froogle service [3]  and also to 
publish it off my web site as an RDF feed.  Were someone to use the RDF 
feed to determine if I said that I could delive a particular product at 
any given time, they would need to use a non-monotonic inference process.  

For example my RDF feed might contain the triple:

speaktomecatalog:SHAGGY froogle:exp_date "20031201"

Then later my RDF feed might contain:

speaktomecatalog:SHAGGY froogle:instock "N"

The first triple entails the availibility of [4] the second denies it. 
 I would expect shopping agents to understand the meaning of the second 
triple even in the presence of the first triple, and I do not think that 
would be "clearly irrational" on my part.

What do you think?

[1] http://speaktomecatalog.com
[2] http://robustai.net/RDF-COMMONS/datafeed.pdf
[3] http://froogle.google.com/
[4] http://www.speaktomecatalog.com/page/dogs.htm seeAlso [5]
[5] http://www.google.com/search?q=%22luv%20pup%22%20shaggy

Seth Russell

Received on Monday, 24 February 2003 14:10:29 UTC