Re: A comment on DAML FAQ

From: Ian Horrocks (horrocks@cs.man.ac.uk)
Date: 06/09/01


On June 5, Deborah Mcguinness writes:
> Good points pat.
> 
> In followup to the discussion in today's meeting the following two
> additional sources of information on how to use daml-like systems follow:
> 
> The first is how to use a kl-one-like system  (or how to use a simple dl
> system)
> 
> Ronald J. Brachman, Alex Borgida, Deborah L. McGuinness, Peter F.
> Patel-Schneider, and Lori Alperin Resnick. ``Living with CLASSIC: When
> and How to Use a KL-ONE-Like Language.'' In Principles of Semantic
> Networks: Explorations in the representation of knowledge, ed. John Sowa.
> San Mateo, California: Morgan Kaufmann, 1991, pages 401--456.

I don't mean to disparage this paper - in fact I still regularly cite
it and recommend it - but I would suggest that there is an urgent need
for a more up to date version of the same kind of paper, one that
reflects the changes in KR that have taken place in the intervening 10
years and (some of) the additional expressive power provided by modern
KR languages (like DAML+OIL). Any volunteers?

Ian


> 
> I just put up an abstract page for it that points to the postscript
> version peter has up:
> http://www.ksl.Stanford.EDU/people/dlm/papers/living-with-classic-abstract.html
> 
> Also, we used the examples in this paper to provide an ontology tutorial
> aimed more at protege than any other system.    one could think of this
> as how to build a first ontology using a language with at least medium
> level expressive power.
> 
> ref:
> Natalya Fridman Noy and Deborah L. McGuinness. ``Ontology Development
> 101: A Guide to Creating Your First Ontology''. Stanford Knowledge
> Systems Laboratory Technical Report KSL-01-05 and Stanford Medical
> Informatics Technical Report SMI-2001-0880, March 2001.
> 
> abstract (with pointers) is up at:
> http://www.ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm/papers/ontology-tutorial-noy-mcguinness-abstract.html
> 
> d
> 
> pat hayes wrote:
> 
> > Q:       Do I need a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence to use DAML?
> > A:
> >         No. The designers of DAML are seeking to merge experience
> > gained from their collective work in Knowledge
> >         Representation and other AI fields, the World Wide Web,
> > software development, and military and commercial
> >         applications to provide a language and tools that balance
> > usability and power.
> >
> > That answer is a bit of a cop-out. The fact is that DAML in its
> > present form is *not* easy to learn or to follow. Many of its
> > constructs are fairly abstruse (I'm thinking in particular of the
> > min/maxCardinalityQ). The restriction/onProperty/toClass way of
> > talking is not given by God to all right-thinking people, but is an
> > idiosyncratic perspective limited to those familiar with the, er,
> > classical class languages. It still makes my head hurt. So I think
> > the honest answer might be more like "No, but it sure would help, and
> > you had better know a bit about object-oriented class-inheritance
> > languages."
> >
> > But more seriously, surely the first FAQ should be something like
> > "what use is DAML to me?" or "What should I use DAML for?" or some
> > such. The FAQ right now doesnt seem to actually say what DAML really
> > is in any sharp sense. For example, we might point out that the
> > 'class/property' way of talking has been widely used in Krep and is
> > closely linked to things like data modelling languages, just to kind
> > of locate this whole enterprise in some kind of intellectual space.
> >
> > Before asking why not use XML, something should explain the
> > relationships of DAML to RDF(S) and XML.
> >
> > Pat
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> > IHMC                                    (850)434 8903   home
> > 40 South Alcaniz St.                    (850)202 4416   office
> > Pensacola,  FL 32501                    (850)202 4440   fax
> > phayes@ai.uwf.edu
> > http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayes
> 
> --
>  Deborah L. McGuinness
>  Knowledge Systems Laboratory
>  Gates Computer Science Building, 2A Room 241
>  Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-9020
>  email: dlm@ksl.stanford.edu
>  URL: http://ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm/index.html
>  (voice) 650 723 9770    (stanford fax) 650 725 5850   (computer fax)
> 801 705 0941
> 
> 


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : 04/02/02 EST