Re: proposal for working on the ontology language

From: Frank van Harmelen <Frank.van.Harmelen@cs.vu.nl>
Subject: Re: proposal for working on the ontology language
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 20:03:40 +0100

> 
> I suggest we also add:
> 
> 4/ Choice of primitives
> 
> After living with DAML+OIL for almost a year now, and having talked to
> lots of people who have used it (and even more people who haven't), I am
> getting pretty convinced that we got the 80/20 balance wrong in DAML+OIL:
> 20% of the primitives account for 80% of the usage/required expressive
> power, and the other primitives contribute to a pretty high step-in
> cost. I would suggest we reduce the language to deal with these issues.  

I'm not sure whether you want to 
a) revise the constructs (primitives) of DAML+OIL either by
   i)  putting in new constructs to replace (some) old ones, or
   ii) changing the syntax of (some of) the constructs; or
b) removing constructs.

> Also, we have lost rather too much of the "frame-style" modelling in the
> language. Too often DAML+OIL requires a significant mental shift before
> one can express the intended knowledge.  

This seems to indicate that you want to do a above, resulting in a
syntax more like the OIL syntax.

> I don't think either of these points will require a whole-sale redesign. 
>
> I am willing to contribute to both of these issues. 
>
> Frank.

Great.  Make a proposal.  I'm certainly not wed to the syntax of DAML+OIL.

Just remember that none of this will happen without a leader.  Are you
volunteering?


Note that my proposal is not to do any changes to the character of
DAML+OIL.  The proposal consists of
1/ creating a semantics for DAML+OIL that is compatible with the RDF model
   theory;
2/ investigating the possibility of changes to some of the DAML+OIL syntax;
   and
3/ modifying the datatyping facilities in DAML+OIL to make them more
   compatible with (one of?) the proposals for datatyping in RDF.
I'm not volunteering to do more than this.


peter

Received on Thursday, 13 December 2001 09:13:00 UTC