Re: DAML Level of Effort for FY03-FY05

Hello, Dave --

In your capacity as keeper of the DARPA/SONAT ontologies, I have a
question about the "instance data."  I am cc-ing www-rdf-logic because
there seems to be a general issue here about how DAML datasets work.

These ontologies are found at 

http://www.daml.org/experiment/ontology/

and I don't think they're sensitive (or they would be https: instead
of http:).

The file af-a.daml is RDF, rather than DAML, and appears to consist of
"instance data," not ontology.

Here is the beginning of that file:

<rdf:RDF
  xmlns:rdf='http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#'
  xmlns:rdfs='http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#'
  xmlns:NS0='http://www.daml.org/experiment/ontology/beta/elements-ont#'
 >

  <rdf:Description rdf:about='http://www.daml.org/2001/12/factbook/af.daml#A1202'>
    <NS0:country rdf:resource='http://www.daml.org/2001/09/countries/fips#AF'/>
    <rdf:type rdf:resource='http://www.daml.org/2001/12/factbook/factbook-ont#Port'/>
    <rdfs:label>Kheyrabad</rdfs:label>
  </rdf:Description>

My problem is this:

Wouldn't it be much more informative if this line

  xmlns:NS0='http://www.daml.org/experiment/ontology/beta/elements-ont#'

were supplemented by something like this:

  <daml:imports rdf:resource="http://www.daml.org/experiment/ontology/beta/elements-ont#"/>

But it's not clear where this would go.

Is it supposed to be the case that just mentioning an ontology's
namespace means that the file uses that ontology?  I find that rather
disconcerting.  For the time being, we'll make that assumption, but
this seems like a bug (or gap) in the DAML spec.  There ought to be an
official way to say "This RDF file is based on ontologies X, Y, and
Z."

                                             -- Drew McDermott

Received on Sunday, 21 April 2002 07:37:00 UTC