Re: What do the ontologists want

   [charles munat]
   > This discussion seems to be devolving into yet another impasse. I suggest
   > that we all back up a bit.

   [peter patel-schneider]
   I don't believe that this approach will solve the disagreement between
   those of us who what to know what various constructs that are already in
   RDF really mean that those of us who are using these constructs for various
   purposes.

   The basic complaint of the first group is that people in the second group
   are going beyond what RDF is capable of.  People in the second group use
   the reification syntax, but have some extra meaning for it that is not
   shared by all interested in RDF.  It is the contention of the first group
   that the use of these extra meanings make RDF no longer be a true
   representation language, and thus ill suited for representing information
   in the WWW.

For the record, since Pat Hayes seems to playing Don Quixote all by
himself in this discussion, let me say that I agree with about 95% of
what he says, and Peter probably does too.  The only reason we haven't
jumped in earlier is that we have said it all before.

I do think we owe the group a concrete proposal for fixing RDF/DAML.
I made such a proposal
(http://cs-www.cs.yale.edu/homes/dvm/daml/proposal.html), 
and am now rethinking it.  The most urgent change is to get rid of the
triples idea; then most of the pressure for reification will vanish.

                                             -- Drew McDermott

Received on Wednesday, 16 May 2001 09:29:58 UTC