Re: RDF as a syntax for OWL (was Re: same-syntax extensions to RDF)

I'll try and keep this short.

My earlier messages were simply aimed at finding out to what extent
you had tried to use the methods I suggested, and what the exact
problem was that you were trying to solve (which wasn't completely
clear to me from reading the earlier posts). Your somewhat vehement
dismissal of the triple representation of OWL seemed unnecessarily
generalized to me, perhaps I have read that wrong however. If your
only point is that for some tasks (like nnf conversion and species
validation), triples are an unwieldy representation format, and that
other formats are much better suited for these tasks, then fine, I
will happily accept this, especially since you indicated that the
approach I suggested was actually more or less what you tried and it
didn't work.

A few last clarifications on my part:

Bijan Parsia wrote:

[snip]

>> Then perhaps my problem with all this is that you seem
> 
> 
> I humbly request that you stop with the seem claims. Either amass
> enough confidence from your reading of my text to make a defensible
> claim or ask me a question.

Stop being so defensive. I'm not accusing you of anything here (nor
anywhere else, for that matter). When I say "you seem" I merely mean
"you seem to me", i.e. "I understood from your posts". I'm not putting
words in your mouth, I'm merely trying to understand what the heck you
are saying, and inviting you to correct me if I'm wrong.

[snip]

> Look, if you already  have a species validator, you don't need 
> (necessarily) to write one. If you use the OWL API structures, you
> don't have to think about triples. But the claim in question is
> whether triples are *nice* to work with. My counter claim is that
> my experience is that they are neither standalone nice, nor nice by
> comparison, for a wide range of common tasks.

As I said above, I think I can almost completely agree with this.
Except that I have the feeling that you overstate the case when you
say "wide range of common tasks". But I guess it's a matter of
perspective, and I certainly concede that for at least the tasks you
mentioned as examples, this is probably true.

I still fail to see, however, how, in the wider scope of things, this 
is a problem, since we know that other formats exist, to which we can 
easily translate OWL ontologies, and that these other formats make 
these tasks so much easier. You mentioned "playing the semantic web 
game", but I don't believe that that necessarily means you have to 
manipulate triples.

[snip a lot of confusion and misunderstanding from both of us]

Finally: it was at no point my intention to ridicule you or your
approach, merely to find out what the scope of your problem with RDF
triples for OWL was. You seem to have taken offense at this however,
for which I'm sorry.


Jeen
-- 
Jeen Broekstra          Aduna BV
Knowledge Engineer      Julianaplein 14b, 3817 CS Amersfoort
http://aduna.biz        The Netherlands
tel. +31(0)33 46599877  fax. +31(0)33 46599877

Received on Thursday, 6 January 2005 10:23:29 UTC