From: Frank van Harmelen (Frank.van.Harmelen@cs.vu.nl)
Date: 08/28/01
For what it's worth, here is my summary/understanding of what we could say to the RDF Core group in response to their proposal to enforce acyclicity of subClassOf.
Frank.
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1. in DAML+OIL, subclass-relations can be inferred even if they are not explicitly stated (note that this is an important difference from RDF-S, where A is only a subclass of B if >*and only if*< there is an explicit statement to that effect).
2. as a result of point 1, acyclicity of the subclass-relation in DAML+OIL cannot always be detected by purely syntactic means, since computationally expensive inference may be needed to detect implicit ("implied") subclass-relations
3. because of point 2, DAML+OIL cannot require acyclicity of the subclass-relationship, since that requirement could only be enforced at great computational expense.
4. Point 3 means that if RDF-S will enforce acyclicity of rdfs:subClassOf, then DAML+OIL can no longer use rdfs:subClassOf. In other words, DAML+OIL will be forced to introduce daml:subClassOf
5. Point 4 would mean that much (all?) backward compatability between RDF-S and DAML+OIL would disappear: an RDF-S processor would be unable to catch any of the semantics of a DAML+OIL ontology (whereas currently, all the explicitly stated subclass relationships in a DAML+OIL ontology are accessible to an RDF-S agent, since DAML+OIL uses rdfs:subClassof
6. An important design rationale behind DAML+OIL (and in fact much other stuff on the Semantic Web so far) has been a layered approach, where languages are stacked on top of each other, with as much partial interpretation between the layers as possible. Tim BL has even argued in [1], [2], [3] and many other places that such "partial understanding is an essential design principle of the Web in general, Semantic or not.
The decision to make rdfs:subClassOf acyclic will force DAML+OIL to introduce daml:subClassOf, and will therefore lead to an almost total loss of partial understanding between these two closely related ontology languages...
Frank.
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[1] Evovability, WWW7 keynote speach, http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Evolution.html
[2] "Web Architecture from 50,000 feet" http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Architecture.html
[3] "Web Architecture: Extensible languages" http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Extensible.html
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