Re: do we really need two languages/levels? [Issue 5.2]

I can only second Chris' statement

"If you use a feature, all the time or not, that is not in OWL-lite, then
use heavy OWL.  "Removing" a feature from OWL-lite is not removing it from
OWL."

However, the argument for having two conformance layers is not only
restricted
to "cheap admission".

In many cases conceptualizations will simply not require the given
expressive power,
consider for example WordNet or any other large thesaurus that have found
broad user
communities and may be called ontologies (since they establish shared
agreement due
to common usage). If we know apriori that only a limited subset of language
features
is used, different (considerably faster) evaluation strategies can be used
in
implementations.

Third, the effort to learn the language is tremendoulsy simplified. Having a
lower
barrier for membership of the expected community will certainly increase the
size
of the community.


Raphael

Received on Thursday, 11 July 2002 09:47:59 UTC