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