The point was rather that, if in the semantic web, one came across something
that said it was a AP214:Part which was a subtype of a STEP:Product which is a
subtype of EXPRESS:Entity, which is a subtype of OLW:thing, would current
approaches to the semantic web interpret it correctly? The reason for asking
this question is that, in my experience, let a computer programmer loose with
some constuct which is intended to have a conventional interpretation and
they will ignore the convention, and manipulated according to its computational
properties.
MW: Exactly, which was why I said why would you expect any two
interpretations to be consistent? This was difficult enough with EXPRESS when
there were thought police in control of the integrated resources. In the Wild
Web just about anything could happen.
My
understanding is that "semantics" in "semantic web" is
concerned with the semantics of the logical operators, rather than the
semantics of the terms, such as instantiate from OWL:thing. Hence, if one were
to interpret OWL:thing as simply the modelling construct EXPRESS:Entity, would
subsequent subtyping to STEPProduct or STEP:Version make further interpetation
impossible? Or would this provide another form of Upper Ontology?
MW: Without something that was effectively an upper ontology
(and people agreeing to use the one way of implementing it in OWL – or whatever)
then you have little chance of integrating anything except with a pot puri of
interfaces.
Regards
Matthew West
Information Junction
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