[Person-ontology] D7 - Which languages are better than OWL?

[Gian Piero Zarri]

    Dear Philippe,

    I am sometimes a little bit surprised by your interpretations of the 
different facets of this discussion. Anyway, let me comment very quickly 
on some points of your recent mail where my name appears:

    In the "RDF+OWL is not a good general KRL" Section at the beginning 
of your mail you write:

>                  argument: "most practical_applications do not require a language as
>                             restricted as OWL"(gpZarri)  //details at end of section
>
    My argument is exactly the opposite one: "most non-trivial practical 
applications cannot be carried on correctly making use of such a limited 
language like OWL". In reality, you retract then this "argument" at the 
end of your mail (see below) but, please, suppress "gpzarri" from the 
above sentence.

>                  
>         - ("in 2007, no W3C_language provides a way to specify in a concept definition that
>             some relations are mandatory"
>
    Why in a "concept definition" ? There are many other Knowledge 
Representation structures (e.g., NKRL template) besides the usual (and 
trivial) "concepts". I could suggest then to change "... in a concept 
definition" into "... in a single definition".

>              
>         - "a good_general_KRL should provide a way to specify in a concept definition that
>            some relations are mandatory"(gpZarri),
>
    See above with respect to "concept".

>       argument:
>         - ("in 2007, no W3C_language provides a way to specify that some relations are 
>             contemporaneous"
>               objection: - "RDF permits to use meta-statements"(pm)
>                          - "meta-statements permit to specify that some relations are
>                             contemporaneous"(pm)
>           )(gpZarri (pm))
>         - ("a good_general_KRL should provide a way to specify that some relations are
>             contemporaneous"
>               specialization: "a good_general_KRL should permit to use meta-statements"(pm)
>           )(gpZarri);
>

    I find all these sentences at least incomplete. First of all, I 
don't find there my starting point for this discussion: "No W3C language 
provides a way to describe correctly and completely simple 'situations' 
(sorry, John), facts, events etc. that, like "Peter gave a book to 
Mary", are intrinsically n-ary". Secondly if, with your 
"meta-statements" sentences, you refer to proposals like that of making 
use of modal logics (sic!) to try to transform artificially into "n-ary" 
something that has been created as "binary", I don't agree at all. Make 
use of binary concepts to describe static notions (as "mammals" and 
"elephants" and the relationships among them) and use (in general) n-ary 
structures when you must describe dynamic situations, events, actions or 
whatever.

    On the contrary, I can agree with the following paragraphs. Only a 
point: I don't think that "expert systems are better than OWL". I think 
only that, from a "CONCRETE application of the Knowledge Representation 
techniques" point of view, the situation beginning of the '80 is not so 
different from the actual one. And I agree completely with Jacques 
Pitrat - you know him very well - when he says that : "... at least, 
reading some AI and Cognitive Science papers in the '70 was  amusing and 
exciting, while now the AI literature is, in general, so boring...".

    Regards,

    GPZ

> 
>     "most practical_applications do not require a language as restricted as OWL"
>       specialization:
>         ("most practical_applications requires a language more expressive than OWL"
>            argument: - "a practical_application requires the use_of_rules"(gpZarri)
>                      - "the use_of_rules is hard with a DL"(gpZarri),
>            argument: "any notation for OWL can only be ugly and verbose"(gpZarri),
>            argument: "OWL is difficult for an average programmer to deal with"(gpZarri),
>            argument: ("OWL has been a flop from a concrete/commercial viewpoint until 2007"
>                         argument: "THIS was acknowledged by the IEEE Intelligent Systems issue 
>                                    of September/October of 2007"(gpZarri)
>                      )(gpZarri),
>            argument: ` "DL-Safe-SWRL is decidable" has for consequence
>                         "SWRL variables can only be bound to known individuals in a KB" '(gpZarri),
>             argument: ("expert systems of the seventies were more interesting than OWL"
>                          argument: "in 2007 the best way to use rules along with a DL-language is
>                                     to re-use an expert system such as Jess or Algernon"(gpZarri)
>                       )(gpZarri)
>         )(pm),
>       argument: "most programmers do not care about computational_tractability"(gpZarri),
>       argument: ("RDF is probably more useful than OWL from an 'applicability' viewpoint"
>                    argument: ("several commercials_products use RDF and not OWL"
>                                 example: "Oracle_11g_RDF_database uses RDF and not OWL"(gpZarri),
>                                 example: "GroupMe! and not OWL"(gpZarri)
>                              )(gpZarri),
>                 )(gpZarri);
>
>
>
>2.3. Mandatory tasks of the SUO?
>Warning: the sentences in this sub-section are not yet normalized.
>
>
> "the SUO endeavour includes setting up a better alternative to OWL"(gpZarri)
>   argument: "most practical_applications requires a language more expressive 
>              than OWL"(gpZarri);
> 
> "the SUO endeavour requires more than informal_on-line_discussions"
>   argument: - "the SUO endeavour requires at least one 
>                                 building_of_a_significant_application"(gpZarri)
>             - "the building_of_an_application requires more than
>                                          informal_on-line_discussions"(gpZarri)
>             - "the building_of_significant_application requires money"(gpZarri)
>             - "the building_of_significant_application reuires to meet each other
>                                                          face to face"(gpZarri);
>
>  
>