Re: getting daml:imports right is easy?

[I'm forwarding a short interchange between Dan Connolly and me on
the "importing" issue, with his permission.]

From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
To: Drew McDermott <drew.mcdermott@yale.edu>

On Wed, 2002-04-24 at 12:39, Drew McDermott wrote:
> 
>    Do tell how to get the specification of daml:imports right,
>    please!
> 
>    It seems, to me, to involve messy stuff like log:semantics,
>    cyc-style 'lifting', and that sort of thing. Doesn't
>    look easy to me.
> 
> I don't know what log:semantics and cyc-style lifting are.

I'm not sure what log:semantics is either, formally;
but re cyc-style lifting, see

  Contexts: A Formalization and Some Applications
  http://www-formal.stanford.edu/guha/guha-thesis.ps


> But, as I said on www-rdf-logic, importing an ontology just means
> incorporating its contents.  What's hard about that?

ont:imports isn't just magic syntax. It's a property
that relates ontology documents. It can be specialized
using subProperty.

For example, in OntX:

	my:imports rdfs:subPropertyOf ont:imports.

	<> my:imports <OntY>.

	:Collie rdfs:subClassOf :Dog.
	:Lassie rdf:type :Collie.

in OntY:

	:Dog rdfs:subClassOf :Animal.


So Lassie is an animal; but you have to do reasoning
to figure out what to import from OntX.


> Perhaps we're having some confusion about "importing"
> vs. "translation."  The latter is a much more difficult problem, and
> we know where most of the bodies are buried.  For instance, ontology 1
> wants to use ontology 2, but everything in ontology 2 is temporally
> scoped, whereas ontology 1 concerns a static world.  The two have to
> be merged in such a way that time information is removed from onto-2
> assertions without garbling them.
> 
> Please follow up.
> 
>                                              -- Drew
- -- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Wednesday, 24 April 2002 21:40:03 UTC