RE: DAML+OIL (March 2001) released: a correction

> > From: Jim Hendler [mailto:jhendler@darpa.mil]
> > DAML+OIL did not have authority to change anything in RDF or to
> > otherwise impact the RDF spec except by example.
>
>Jim has (as usual) got right to the heart of the problem.  Feedback between
>designers of different architecture layers is essential if you want to
>create a coherent architecture.  So far, the sequence has been that RDF has
>taken XML as a given, and DAML has taken RDF as a given --- feed-forward
>with no feedback.  In fact, both XML and RDF are subject to periodic
>revision, but there hadn't been the time and experience of using them at the
>time the initial versions were formalised (obviously!).  That experience is
>now starting to accrue.
>
>I think two interesting questions can be posed here:
>
>1) How could RDF be changed/augmented/better documented to make it a firmer
>base on which to build DAML+OIL?

Or indeed for any other languages for expressing content. No doubt 
there will be others.

>2) How could XML be changed/augmented/better documented to make it a firmer
>base on which to build RDF?
>
>... and, I guess, (3) is there any chance of these changes happening?  (3),
>at least, would be helped by keeping the dialogue constructive; but (1) and
>(2) require constructive criticism of those existing standards in the light
>of practical experience.  For example, could the appropriate parts of the
>Fikes & McGuinness paper be used within the next revision of RDF to provide
>that clear semantics that many within DAML+OIL wish to see?

I would suggest that the DAML+OIL model-theoretic semantics is a much 
more useful (and certainly more compact) style of semantic 
specification. The axiomatic 'semantics' is not in fact a semantics: 
it is a transliteration into yet another formalism, one that also 
requires a semantic theory to give it any formal meaning. Such 
translations, while often useful, are always hostage to the semantic 
theory of the target language.

Pat Hayes

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Received on Monday, 2 April 2001 17:12:22 UTC