Re: D7 - Which languages are better than OWL?

[mail@philippemartin.com]

Hi all,

I have explicited, normalised and organised the assertions
behind Gian's "quick, incomplete and disorganized comments" 
and Jim's follow-up note about the goal of OWL.
Below are the resulting structures (if your email client 
does not show indented structures, please see their integration
in the wiki at http://krl.wiki-site.com/index.php/Main_Page or 
to the static page at http://www.phmartin.info/suo/). 
These resulting structures (or their assertions) allow you to give 
rationales for or against the many classic unargumented assertions
that have been made.
Hence, this is a good start for the discussion.
I added some objections (see the relations by "pm"). 
If I misinterpreted some assertions, please correct them.

Philippe

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 "exchanging_ontologies_via_OWL does not require that `OWL is a good general_KRL'"
   argument:
    ("exchanging_ontologies_via_OWL is not detrimental to
      knowledge_representation_or_inferencing_with_a_language_more_expressive_than_OWL"
        objection: - "exchanging_ontologies_via_OWL may lead to a loss of semantics"(pm)
                   - ("some applications require (or provide better results with)
                       precisions that cannnot be represented via OWL"
                         generalisation: "applications requiring precision need 
                                          the expressivity" (pm)
                     )(pm)
    )(jrSchoening);



 "no W3C_language is a good_general_KRL"
   specialization: "OWL is no a good_general_KRL" (gpZarri),
   argument: - "no W3C_language is a KRL_with_n-ary_relations" (gpZarri)
             - "a good_general_KRL should be a KRL_with_n-ary_relations" (gpZarri);

 "a good_general_KRL should be an expressive_KRL"
   specialization:
     ("a good_general_KRL should be a KRL_with_n-ary_relations"
         argument:
           - ("many applications would benefit from a KRL_with_n-ary_relations"
                specialization: "Semantic Web Services would benefit from
                                 a KRL_with_n-ary_relations"
             )(gpZarri),
           - ("a knowledge_representation_with_binary_relations cannot be as good as
               a knowledge_representation_with_n-ary_relations"
                 objection: "a representation using an n-ary relation can always be 
                             converted to a representation using a binary relation
                             without loss of semantics"(pm),
                 opposition: "a knowledge_representation_with_binary_relations is better
                              than a knowledge_representation_with_n-ary_relations"(pm)
             )(gpZarri)
     )(pm);
  
 "a knowledge_representation_with_binary_relations is better
  than a knowledge_representation_with_n-ary_relations"
   argument: - "a knowledge_representation_with_binary_relations explicits
                concepts and relations that are implicit in a 
                knowledge_representation_with_n-ary_relations"
             - "the more explicit the knowledge_representation, the better for
                knowledge matching"(pm),
             - "knowledge matching supports knowledge comparison, retrieval and
                inferencing"(pm);



 "most practical_applications do not require a language as restricted as OWL"
   specialization:
     ("most practical_applications requires a language more expressive than OWL"
        argument: - "a practical_application requires the use_of_rules"(gpZarri)
                  - "the use_of_rules is hard with a DL"(gpZarri),
        argument: "any notation for OWL can only be ugly and verbose"(gpZarri),
        argument: "OWL is difficult for an average programmer to deal with"(gpZarri),
        argument: ("OWL has been a flop from a concrete/commercial viewpoint of view until 2007"
                     argument: "THIS was acknowledged by the IEEE Intelligent Systems issue 
                                of September/October of 2007"(gpZarri)
                  )(gpZarri),
         argument: ` "DL-Safe-SWRL is decidable" has for consequence
                     "SWRL variables can only be bound to known individuals in a KB" '(gpZarri),
         argument: ("expert systems of the seventies were more interesting than OWL"
                      argument: "in 2007 the best way to use rules along with a DL-language is to
                                 to re-use an expert system such as via Jess or Algernon"(gpZarri)
                   )(gpZarri)
     )(pm),
   argument: "most programmers do not care about computational_tractability"(gpZarri),
   argument: ("RDF is probably more useful than OWL from an 'applicability' viewpoint"
                argument: ("several commercials_products use RDF and not OWL"
                             example: "Oracle_11g_RDF_database uses RDF and not OWL"(gpZarri),
                             example: "GroupMe! and not OWL"(gpZarri)
                          )(gpZarri),
             )(gpZarri);



 "the SUO endeavour includes setting up a better alternative to OWL"(gpZarri)
   argument: "most practical_applications requires a language more expressive 
              than OWL"(gpZarri);
 
 "the SUO endeavour requires more than informal_on-line_discussions"
   argument: - "the SUO endeavour requires at least one 
                                 building_of_a_significant_application"(gpZarri)
             - "the building_of_an_application requires more than
                                          informal_on-line_discussions"(gpZarri)
             - "the building_of_significant_application requires money"(gpZarri)
             - "the building_of_significant_application reuires to meet each other
                                                          face to face"(gpZarri);