Re: WOWG: first language proposal

Ian Horrocks wrote:
> 
> On April 5, Peter F. Patel-Schneider writes:
> > 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.
> 
> Maybe what Jeff means is that if such a property definition can
> capture (almost) everything that can be said about properties in the
> non-frame portion, then there seems little point in supporting (many
> of) the non-frame style property axioms.

Yes, that is basically what I mean. In an earlier message [1], I gave
some examples of what an XML syntax for WebOnt might look like. One
example from that message was:

<!-- This says that a trio has three members, all of whom are musicians.
-->
  <owl:class ID="Trio">
     <owl:hasProperty ref="#hasMember">
        <owl:cardinality value="3" />
        <owl:allvalues>
           <owl:class ref="#Musician" />
        </owl:allvalues>
     </owl:hasProperty>
  </owl:class>

Here, the restrictions of the property are grouped inside the
hasProperty element (note that owl:allvalues has the same meaning as
daml:toClass). Anything from section 4.3 of your proposal that relates a
property and something else could be handled in the same way. Thus, we
could retain the frame-like syntax for most of the description part of
the language. This would make it more natural for people who learned the
"light" frame part to eventually learn the "heavy" part.

Jeff

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-webont-wg/2002Mar/0277.html

Received on Friday, 5 April 2002 13:45:12 UTC