Re: Patel-Schneider Paradox ...

At 5:22 PM +0100 1/19/02, Frank van Harmelen wrote:
>"Peter F. Patel-Schneider" wrote:
>
>>  Well, in some sense, no change is necessary.  RDFS does not appear to have
>>  any problems in an of itself.  True extensions to RDFS can be made and also
>>  do not appear to have any problem.  The problems only occur when a
>>  same-syntax extension is mandated.
>   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>Indeed.
>
>>From my understanding of the discussions at Bell Labs,
>the problem does indeed only occur when OWL must be a "same-syntax 
>extension", ie when OWL would be required to
>- use RDF syntax, >*and*<
>- be a semantic >*extension*< of RDF
>
>One of the proposals on the table was to keep the first and drop the second.
>OWL would then include most of the inferences sanctioned by RDF, but 
>not all of them,
>making it not a strict extension.
>(in particular OWL would loose some RDF-inferences that wouldn't 
>make much sense from an OWL point of view anyway).
>
>This is the option that I would currently favour.
>
>Frank.
>    ----
>(Peter, please correct me if my understanding is wrong).

For the record - we have asked a small team to produce a document 
that will explain to all of us what the space of possibilities was - 
all authors of that document were asked to be as neutral as possible 
on recommendations - the document is to be factual and available for 
our WG to use to help see how we might come to consensus on this 
tough issue.

If we feel that the only way is to ask for changes in RDF, that is 
out of our charter, but I can go to the semantic web coordination 
group and extend our request for discussion and possible rechartering 
of one of the two SW WGs (us or RDF Core) or for a special combined 
group to work the issue.
  -JH



-- 
Professor James Hendler				  hendler@cs.umd.edu
Director, Semantic Web and Agent Technologies	  301-405-2696
Maryland Information and Network Dynamics Lab.	  301-405-6707 (Fax)
AV Williams Building, Univ of Maryland		  College Park, MD 20742
http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/hendler

Received on Friday, 18 January 2002 16:42:49 UTC