REQDOC: reification

One of the requirements in the requirements document is the ability to
associate properties with statements.  This would require, at least,
some version of reification of statements, and to work right would require
a way of referring to statings.

RDF has made a total hash of reification.  The RDF Core WG is trying to fix
this a bit, but it is probably out of their scope to make any significant
improvment (as opposed to significant fix).

I think that adding reification to OWL would be, at best, a significant
research project and, at worst, a black hole.

In any case, I don't see the motivation for the ability to associate
properties with statements (in the OWL logic, at least) from the shared
ontologies goal.  Surely it is possible to share ontologies without
associating properties with statements.

Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research

Received on Thursday, 14 February 2002 13:55:34 UTC