Re: A few comments on the new DAML-OIL spec

From: Peter F. Patel-Schneider (pfps@research.bell-labs.com)
Date: 03/06/01


Some more comments.

From: Jeff Heflin <heflin@cs.umd.edu>
Subject: A few comments on the new DAML-OIL spec
Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2001 15:40:51 -0500

> First, I apologize for missing the last two telecons: I've been going on
> job interviews. Nevertheless, it looks like some good progress has been
> made without me... maybe I should miss more telecons! ;-)
> 
> Here's my comments on the various specs available at
> http://www.daml.org/2001/03/daml+oil-index
> 
> daml+oil.daml:
> --------------
> 1) rdfs:range of maxCardinality is
> http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#nonNegativeInteger, I assume this
> should be http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema#nonNegativeInteger
>
> 2) ditto for rdfs:range of cardinality, minCardinalityQ,
> maxCardinalityQ, and cardinalityQ

These should be fixed.

> 3) Why is UnambiguousProperty a subclass of AbstractProperty? Can't
> there be Datatype properties that are unambiguous? For example,
> numberOfMonth (with domain Month, and range nonNegativeInteger)?

The problem is that to check that a property is unambiguous concerns
properties of the range of the relation, and we didn't want to have to
think about properties of datatypes.

> daml+oil-walkthru:
> ------------------
> 1) In the section "Defining individuals", it says "Note that to use
> datatype values, we had to provide an XML Schema datatype along with the
> value. This
> datatype is used to parse the lexical representation into an actual
> value." I thought that this was optional, especially if the DAML
> ontology defines the range. I believe Mike Dean had argued earlier that
> if we had to tag the type of each value, then it would be very
> inconvenient for users (now come the counter-arguments about how most
> users will use tools to do the markup anyway...). Personally, it seems a
> little overboard to me, and I'd like to have a choice as to whether or
> not I provide the datatype with every value I specify or take my chances
> that any consuming agent will download the appropriate ontology before
> parsing. If I'm preaching to the converted, then maybe we need to be a
> little clearer in the Walkthru document. If this was voted on at a
> telecon that I missed, then I guess I can't complain.

This is probably a missed piece when the extension to straight literals was
added.

> reference.html:
> ---------------
> 1) In the section "Property restriction", the first paragraph has an
> unifinished sentence "Both kinds of restrictions..."

The fix is probably to remove this paragraph, and to remove the visible
<\span> tag.

> 2) My comment for datatype values above (daml+oil-walkthu #1) also
> applies to the Datatype Values section
> 
> 3) My comment on UnambiguousProperty above (daml+oil.daml #3) also
> applies in the "Property element" section

See above.

> Jeff

peter

PS:  Thanks for the close reading.


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