RE: What do the ontologists want

> From: Sergey Melnik [mailto:melnik@db.stanford.edu]
[...]
> can anyone criticizing reification suggest a more 
> suitable mechanism
> for handling the aforementioned features that makes both 
> programmers and logicians happy?

Ditch RDF and layer a logic directly on XML?  Just a thought... the problem
is that it loses a lot of the work currently being put into the Semantic Web
and being described using RDF, unless there's a well-defined migration path.
But it would give much more flexible structures and a far simpler way of
denoting what has formally defined semantics versus what is simply a data
structure.

The alternative appears to be to accept that RDF will be used as a very,
very verbose encoding of LISP cons cells; and that some part of those
structures might be used to represent something formal, but that a large
part will straight data structure, or be glue that could be encoded and
processed more easily using a richer syntax.

		- Peter

[insert back view of Peter running down infinitely long corridor towards the
end marked "RDF Logic, Holy Grail, World Peace and Emergency Exit" pursued
by mixed crowd of logicians and RDF enthusiasts waving pitchforks and
torches]

Received on Friday, 18 May 2001 04:25:33 UTC