RE: Proposed response to Martin Merry, HP

If we feel the need to assert that complete reasoning in OWL DL 
is impractical, I presume we should go on to say that
complete reasoning in OWL Full is impossible?  And that reasoning
with any particular set of rules in OWL Full is unpredictable, 
unless the user has performed a complexity analysis on his rule set?

- Mike


-----Original Message-----
From: Jeremy Carroll [mailto:jjc@hplb.hpl.hp.com] 
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2003 10:02 AM
To: Smith, Michael K; Guus Schreiber; Jim Hendler
Cc: www-webont-wg@w3.org
Subject: RE: Proposed response to Martin Merry, HP



I am less than convinced by text that is not more in-your-face.
(this is not really meant as a response to Mike, more to Jim)


>   Ontology developers adopting OWL should consider which species best
>   suits their needs.  The choice between OWL Lite and OWL DL
>   depends on the extent to which users require the more expressive
>   restriction constructs provided by OWL DL.
> [NEW:
>   Reasoners for OWL
>   Lite will have desirable computational properties.  Reasoners for
>   OWL DL, while dealing with a decidable sublanguage, will be subject to
>   higher worst-case complexity.
> ]
>

this text still suggests that what we once called complete DL consistency
checkers will exist. Since we have no evidence for this, and in fact we have
evidence to the contrary, that should be made explicit: e.g.

[
   Reasoners for OWL
   Lite will have desirable computational properties.
Theoretically,  complete reasoners for
OWL DL could be built, since it is a decidable sublanguage;
however the worst-case complexity would probably be unacceptable.

]

OWL DL is primarily a theoretical constuct and a research hypothesis - not a
proven practical level.

Jeremy

Received on Thursday, 12 June 2003 11:24:14 UTC