concerning lite, fast, large versions of OWL

Although I am strongly in favor of having "classes as instances" in some 
version of OWL, I am also very strongly in favor of as simple as possible 
a view of our language.

Although consensus regarding the layering was a major accomplishment, it 
leaves us now with three versions of OWL: fast and large based on the RDF 
syntax/semantics, and of course the orthogonal "lite" version of the 
language.

Having three versions of the language opens us up to some pretty obvious 
criticisms, in my view.  I think this would be even worse if OWL Lite, 
which is supposed to be a simplified version of OWL, is not a subset of 
Fast OWL, since Fast OWL is a subset of Large OWL.

I was passionately ambivalent about OWL Lite in general, but I would 
strongly object to it as yet another subset of Large OWL.  Several people 
have expressed opinions that "classes as instances" should be in OWL Lite. 
 I'm not sure why - if it is allowed in Large OWL, then what difference 
does it make if it is in OWL Lite?

-ChrisW

Dr. Christopher A. Welty, Knowledge Structures Group
IBM Watson Research Center, 19 Skyline Dr.
Hawthorne, NY  10532     USA 
Voice: +1 914.784.7055,  IBM T/L: 863.7055
Fax: +1 914.784.6078, Email: welty@us.ibm.com

Received on Wednesday, 16 October 2002 21:03:20 UTC