summary of status with respect to datatypes [revised]

From: Peter F. Patel-Schneider (pfps@research.bell-labs.com)
Date: 02/22/01


Given that Frank doesn't seem to have produced one of his excellent
summaries for this week's teleconference, let me give it a try.  I will also
include some summarization of the meeting in Washington.

The situation with respect to datatypes appears to contentious over two
issues: 

1/ Whether the datatype is required to be given along with the lexical
representation, or is permitted to be given along with the lexical
representation, or is forbidden to be given along with the lexical
representation.

2/ Whether, for a particular relationship, like size, there is one
relationship between an abstract object and a datatype value or
several, one going to the lexical representation and another (or others)
going to the value itself, as in size and sizeDecimal.

There were three proposals that had been put forward:

A/ An older proposal by Ian and myself of several weeks ago, at
   http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~horrocks/daml+oil/Datatypes-jan-01
B/ The proposal by Dan Connolly at http://www.w3.org/2001/01/ct24
   [corrected]
C/ The current proposal by Ian and myself, prepared last week, at
   http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~horrocks/daml+oil/Datatypes/

They stack up in the following manner:

Proposal	    Issue Status
		1		2

A		permit		one

B		permit?		several

C		require		one

So far, nothing should be too controversial


Now for some (perhaps) more contentious summarization:

At the meeting in Washington, there was general agreement that the proposal
by Ian and myself was the way to go.  Ian and I revised the proposal to the
current proposal above.  After considerable discussion at this week's
teleconference a decision to go with the current proposal, ``as the best we
can do right now''.  To that end Ian, Frank, and I are revising the example,
walkthrough, and reference documents to result in a revision of the spec.
The example and walkthrough have gone through an initial round of editing
and are available at the website above.

peter


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