Re: proposal for working on the ontology language

If rules are outside our charter, what about statements of equivalences
between 2 ontologies (e.g., for semantic mappings for the content
interoperability use case)? I believe DAML+OIL just has 
daml:sameClassAs (class expressions)
daml:equivalentTo (class or property expressions) [and when applied to
properties, is the same as samePropertyAs]
daml:samePropertyAs (property expressions)

Is this sufficient? I think these are ontology-internal constructs, no?
Might they be used across ontologies?

I also note that there is no meta level to DAML+OIL and I think that was
a conscious choice, no?, though I don't know the history of that
decision. Sometimes having a modifiable meta level is a very good thing
(future language extensions, e.g.)

Leo

Jim Hendler wrote:
> 
> At 12:39 PM -0500 12/11/01, Tim Finin wrote:
> >"Peter F. Patel-Schneider" wrote:
> >>   I am concerned that the group is not working on the ontology language
> >>   itself.  There are a number of changes that need to be done to DAML+OIL,
> >>   largely because of changes that have happened since DAML+OIL was designed.
> >>   ...
> >
> >Are adding capabilities to the language, such as the ability
> >to express rules, on our radar screen?  Some of the use cases
> >that I am interested (e.g., representing security policies)
> >will eventually require encoding some rules.
> 
> rules are explicitely out of our charter.  There is a forum
> (www-rdf-rules) for discussing rules and query, and the feeling in
> W3C leadership was that consensus on the "structural" part of the
> ontology (my word - by it I mean the class/subclass/property part of
> the world) was much stronger than in the rules world.  It is expected
> that if rules/query stuff reaches a consensus informally, they will
> come to W3C with a request for their own WG.  One might or might not
> agree as to whether this was the right way to do things, but the
> charter lists the following things as out of bounds, and on this our
> hands are tied
>   -JH
> p.s. Note to web service use case group -- the last one of these also
> applies in some sense to Web services - we are not trying to come up
> with primitives for web services or any specific web-service related
> content.  Showing how webont enhances ability to do things with web
> services, however, is clearly within our charter to develop use cases
> and requirements.
> 
> >     *  Query Rules and query langauges  A serious rule language that
> >can be used for complex inferencing, exchange of proofs, and/or the
> >querying of RDF or Web Ontology documents or repositories is
> >desirable to the eventual development of the semantic web, but out
> >of the scope of the current working group. However, this effort will
> >coordinate with any rule or query working groups that may be
> >constituted as part of the semantic web effort.
> >     * Universal Web Logics Much discussion on www-rdf-logic@w3.org
> >has focused on a universal web logic (UWL) -- the possibility of
> >creating a usable logic that can express any possible web content.
> >There is discussion as to whether this is feasible (or even
> >possible) and as to what features this language might have. The goal
> >of this working group is explicitly not to define such a universal
> >system, but rather a more limited system of immediate use to the web
> >community. The current product may indeed provide a lower layer on
> >which an eventual UWL can be built, but given the expressibility vs.
> >use trade-offs mentioned above, is not expected to be able to
> >directly result in such a logic.
> >     * Agent Communication Languages One use of web ontologies and
> >logics is in support of agent-based computing. While the working
> >group will provide products of use to such systems, the explicit
> >design of agent infrastructure is not a working group goal. In
> >particular, a number of Agent Communication Languages have been
> >proposed, and sets of appropriate performatives discussed at great
> >length. Such work is important to the world at large, but out of the
> >scope of this working group.
> >
> --
> Prof. James Hendler                     Director, Semantic Web and
> Agent Technology
> 301-405-2696 (phone)            Maryland Information and Network Dynamics Lab
> 301-405-8488 (fax)              University of Maryland
> http://www.cs.umd.edu/~hendler  College Park, MD 20742

-- 
_____________________________________________
Dr. Leo Obrst		The MITRE Corporation
mailto:lobrst@mitre.org Intelligent Information Management/Exploitation
Voice: 703-883-6770	7515 Colshire Drive, M/S W640
Fax: 703-883-1379       McLean, VA 22102-7508, USA

Received on Tuesday, 11 December 2001 18:16:47 UTC