Re: WOWG: first language proposal

From: Jeff Heflin <heflin@cse.lehigh.edu>
Subject: Re: WOWG: first language proposal
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 17:43:04 -0500

> Frank et al.,
> 
[...]
> Now on to my
> comments...
> 
> First, I'd like to suggest that we attempt to maintain the frame-nature
> of the language for properties as well (kind of like facets). For
> example, we could have the productions:
> 
> <definition> ::= Property ( <propertyId> ,<facet>* )
> <facet> ::= <domain> | <range> | <supersprops> | Transitive |
> SingleValued | UniquelyIdentifying 
> <domain> ::= domain( <classId> )
> <range> ::= range( <classId> | <dataTypeRange> )
> <superprops> := supers( <classId>*)
> etc.

Great idea.  Ian Horrocks had a similar idea that was prepared just a
bit too late to make it into the initial proposal.

> I'd even like to see this idea carried over into the non-frame portion
> of the language. What do you think?

I'm not sure what it would mean to carry this over into the non-frame
portion, except, perhaps, to allow <description> in the frame-like
constructs. 

> Second, I think we should include some kind of syntax to indicate that a
> specific set of definition make up an ontology. Perhaps include:
> 
> <ontology> ::= Ontology ( <definition>*)
> 
> This can also serve as a place holder for us to later attach ontology
> metadata and versioning information.

Again a great idea.  Ian and I were just discussing, on the phone, what it
would take to do this.   Something like a KB is a sequence of ontologies,
and each ontology is a sequence of definitions, facts, ontologies, and
ontology references.  Dublin core information could then be associated with
the ontologies.

> Third, what are you[r] thoughts on using AND, OR, and NOT instead of
> intersectionOf, unionOf, and complementOf (as is done in OIL)? I think
> these might be more intuitive, and would certainly be easier for people
> to type.

I could go either way here.

> Finally, an important issue will be finding a way to map your abstract
> syntax into XML/RDF and still preserve its simplicity. I believe that in
> order to get a good, intuitive syntax, we'll have to seriously consider
> dropping the idea of using triples to represent the language, i.e., do
> not layer on top of RDF Schema (but this is a point I've already raised
> in another thread).

Again, a great idea.  The abstract syntax sort of alludes to this in that
the fact portion is written the way it is so that it can easily be mapped
into RDF/XML but the non-fact portion is different from RDF/XML.

> Jeff

Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research

Received on Friday, 5 April 2002 10:56:17 UTC