Re: DQL Description (for today's telecon)

From: Ian Horrocks (horrocks@cs.man.ac.uk)
Date: 02/28/02


On February 28, Peter F. Patel-Schneider writes:
> From: Pat Hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
> Subject: Re: DQL Description (for today's telecon)
> Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 12:23:55 -0600
> 
> > >I have several comments on the DQL informal description.
> > >
> > >First, I would much prefer to have a definition of what querying is
> > >supposed to be separated from all the interface ``fluff''.
> > 
> > I think that your comment reflects a failure to grasp our point.  The 
> > idea of allowing wrappers is not "interface fluff",  but is an 
> > integral aspect of the proposal. I know it mixes together procedural 
> > and logical matters, but that is a design decision, since the 
> > querying process has both procedural and logical aspects, in our 
> > view, and it is better to try to keep them separate.
> 
> Wrappers?  I'm uncertain as to what you mean by this.  
> 
> If you mean the continuation stuff then I disagree.  Why not have a
> completely non-procedural description of answers and only then define how
> the interface works?

This is precisely what Sergio and I are working on.

Ian

> 
> [...]
> 
> > >The interface itself needs to talk about completeness and fairness.
> > 
> > Why? It is not a spec designed to be able to *prove* that a KB will 
> > eventually answer a query. I don't see any reason to impose 
> > completeness and fairness as part of the spec.What problems would 
> > this avoid? (I suspect you are letting the demands of theory 
> > over-ride those of a standard. )
> 
> I believe that your spec would allow a system to respond
> 
> 	a,a,a,a,a,a,a,....
> 
> when the answer is
> 
> 	a,b,c,d,e
> 
> This should at least be not recommended.
> 
> peter


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