From: Peter F. Patel-Schneider (pfps@research.bell-labs.com)
Date: 02/20/01
There was a comment during today's teleconference to the effect that an extension to DAML+OIL would be trivial as long as there was a (KIF) axiomatization for it. This belief seemed to spring from the fact that there is a KIF axiomatization for DAML+OIL. This is decidedly not the case. Extending DAML+OIL by adding axioms to the axiomatization is a very dangerous endeavour. Some extra axioms can be accommodated, and will not change the characteristics of DAML+OIL. Others, although seemingly innocuous, would drastically change DAML+OIL. Determining just what changes will be made by a particular set of extra axioms is extremely difficult. To illustrate this point, consider RDF(S). RDF(S) has a KIF axiomatization. One could argue, as above, that extending RDF(S) by a collection of extra axioms is trivial. However, suppose that we extend RDF(S) by the DAML+OIL axioms. We now end up with a very different kind of representation language, with very different characteristics. peter
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