Re: Proposed response to Golbeck regarding imports issue

From: Jim Hendler <hendler@cs.umd.edu>
Subject: Re: Proposed response to Golbeck regarding imports issue
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 14:31:13 -0400

> [snip lots of messages from thread]
> 
> Chair hat very much on:
> 
> I will remind the group that we did discuss and resolve this issue. 
> We decided that if there was an imports statement, then the ontology 
> pointed to should be imported (i.e. all the stuff w/imports closure 
> and etc.)
>   We also agreed that if there was not an imports statement, then OWL 
> did NOT commit one to either importing or not importing.

I believe that this is not an accurate statement of the situation.

If there is not an imports statement, then OWL does not license importing.
Any software that does so is not fully OWL compliant.  The negative
entailment test Imports-002 is a test of this situation.

>   Dan and I objected to the former (that imports should be included). 
> The latter was never an issue because none of our documents insist on 
> this.  In OWL DL it is the case that an external reference needs to 
> be an annotation, but no decision was made as to whether annotations 
> should or should not be imported - at least not that I can find in 
> our records.  In OWL Full, there should be no commitment one way or 
> the other -- this was an issue discussed at the Bristol f2f, and 
> continued for a long time after.  The decision recorded in our 
> records is in:
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-webont-wg/2002Nov/0004.html
> and you will see it says nothing about whether a namespace reference 
> (or other naming) does or does not import.

My reading of this message is quite different.  The document exactly
defines which other documents are to be considered to be imported, and this
set of documents is determined solely from imports directives.

> I have not noticed anything in our documents that prohibits the 
> importation in this case, and Dan is right -- if I had read that 
> implication in what Jeff said, I would not have approved it -- since, 
> as Dan points out, what Jeff wrote could be interpreted as saying 
> "Does Not import" (as opposed to saying "doesn't necessarily import") 
> - it should be changed to be clearer.

>   -JH
 
> p.s. Chair hat off: for what it is worth, my opinion is diametrically 
> opposed to Dan's as to how these references should be handled - I 
> think they must NOT cause imports.  But it is precisely because we 
> disagree that we left this unspecified and up to individual 
> implementations to make clear -- Anyone who doesn't want to take a 
> risk can
>   i. use imports if they want imports
>   ii. copy and paste to their own document if they want to make sure 
> nothing is imported beyond what they intended.

peter

Received on Monday, 16 June 2003 23:53:12 UTC