Re: LANG: syntactic version for imports (and other things)

*chair neutrality off*

Frank - exactly right, that's the clearest statement I've seen yet on 
what I think should happen (if this makes it sounds like I'm 
contradicting anything I said earlier, it is because I didn't express 
myself as well as Frank did - and Frank's interpretation is what I 
want)
  -JH

*chair neutrality redonned *



At 4:54 PM +0200 9/25/02, Frank van Harmelen wrote:
>Bernard Horan wrote:
>
>>If I wish to point a reasoner at
>>document 3 to ensure that (say) it has no inconsistencies (in the same
>>way that I can point FaCT at an OilEd document), does this mean that I
>>have to indicate somewhere that the ontology in document 3 should
>>'import' the ontology in document 2? Should it also 'import' the
>>ontology in document 1? Or should it only 'import' the ontology in
>>document 1 if that ontology is not imported by the ontology in document
>>2? I.e. what's the transitive character of 'import' here? And how do I,
>>as a user, know which ontologies I should be importing??
>
>I have always assumed that when drawing any inferences from any OWL 
>statements, you will have to state from which OWL statements you 
>want to draw the inferences.
>
>The obvious ways would be to point at a particular <owl:ontology>.
>This would then include any imported ontologies, but >*not*< any of 
>the ontologies from which classes/properties are used without 
>explicit import statement (but simply by mentioning them).
>
>I would expect toolbuilders to provide you with the option to 
>explicitly mention that you want these additional ontologies to be 
>taken into account as well, but this would require an action on your 
>part, it would not be automatic simply because someone uses a URL 
>from another ontology.
>
>Both our semantics doc and our guide doc should make clear that 
>inferences are drawn with respect to a given set of premisses, and 
>also how these premisses are obtained (by pointing to an ontology 
>(or: several), and thereby getting all its imports as well; not by 
>assuming that every relevant resource on the web is somehow 
>magically included).
>
>This is also my standard answer to the perenial question about 
>inconsistency on the Semantic Web: I won't reason with respect to 
>the entire Web, but only with respect to a set of premisses 
>that >*I*< indicate.
>
>Frank.
>   ----


-- 
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)
Univ of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742	  240-731-3822 (Cell)
http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/hendler

Received on Wednesday, 25 September 2002 14:51:48 UTC