RE: A plea for peace. was: RE: DAML+OIL (March 2001) released: a correction

From: "Jonathan Borden" <jborden@mediaone.net>
Subject: RE: A plea for peace. was: RE: DAML+OIL (March 2001) released: a   correction
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 00:50:24 -0400

> Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
> 
> > [...]
> >
> > > No one argues the utility of logic, yet logic systems have not achieved
> > > widespread usage over the last several decades.
> >
> > I beg to differ.  One of the great successes of computer science is the
> > development and widespread adoption of relational data bases, which are
> > logics, or near enough, in my eyes, for the purposes of this debate.
> 
> Certainly, and for that matter digital computers in their entirety are based
> on binary logic. Relational databases are certainly among the great
> successes of computer science. Yet still you would find it difficult to walk
> up to any large corporate database, and without documentation, and spending
> a fair amount of time, making any real sense of what it contains.

[...]

> I suppose I've always seen as one of the benefits of RDF's triple model the
> very fact that it maps so easily onto a relational table -- and admit that I
> assumed this abstract syntax would in some sense inherit the formalism of
> the underlying database (e.g. this very relational model you mention). If
> you say this _isn't_ the case then I certainly agree things need to be
> fixed, it just seems as though it shouldn't be that hard to do.

I would be very interested in hearing about the details of this easy
mapping.  (Yes, you should consider me to be very skeptical about this.)
I see a number of mismatches between the RDB model and the RDF model,
including open-world versus closed-world, finite versus infinite domains,
notions of identity, how to handle URIs and the things they refer to,
reification, transitivity, inference of types, typing (particularly
subtyping), and ___domain and range.

Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research

Received on Thursday, 5 April 2001 16:28:08 UTC