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Re: [ontolog-forum] Paper on how to build your first ontology

To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 07:25:34 -0500
Message-id: <4EF07EBE.3020509@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On 12/19/11 11:07 PM, John F. Sowa wrote:
> On 12/19/2011 9:15 AM, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
>> SPARQL and SQL are both FOL based, as you know.
> Yes.  I have never been happy with SQL, but I came to appreciate it
> more after looking at RDF, OWL, and SPARQL.
>
>> but SQL is limited.
> More precisely, SQL is a limited and awkward notation for FOL, and
> the major implementations (Oracle, DB2, MySQL...) aren't as efficient
> and flexible as they should be for a broader range of applications.
>
>> http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1961297 -- A co-Relational
>> Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks
> That's a good reference to some of the ongoing controversies.
>
> But I would go much farther than that.  One of the most important
> lessons that RDBs taught the world is that a good optimizing
> compiler can translate a query language based on FOL to
> an efficient method for accessing data.    (01)

+1    (02)

It's something we put to use in our hybrid DBMS already.    (03)

>
> Unfortunately, the major implementations were optimized for
> a limited range of applications.  With VoltDB, Stonebraker
> showed that SQL could be optimized in a different and much
> more efficient way for a different range of applications.
>
> Various graph DBs (eg, OrientDB) showed that you could get
> efficient access to the same data through several different
> notations, including SQL and SPARQL.    (04)

And we do it using SQL, SPARQL, or SQL+SPARQL (aka SPASQL).
>
> The point I would emphasize is that there are many different
> kinds of access methods for many different kinds of applications.
> Furthermore, new methods are being invented all the time, some
> of which are orders of magnitude faster than traditional methods.    (05)

Yes, for instance leveraging Column Store functionality when dealing 
with BI against massive data.    (06)

>
> As Donald Knuth (or maybe Tony Hoare) said,
>
>> We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time:
>> premature optimization is the root of all evil.
> If you state what you want in the simplest and most readable way,
> good compilers can generate better code than most programmers.
> And superprogrammers can invent even better methods that are
> specifically tailored to special kinds of applications.
>
> My recommendation is a version of controlled natural language
> for most people -- including programmers when they are not
> working in programming mode.  Other specialized user interfaces
> can also be valuable for many kinds of applications.    (07)

Yes.    (08)

>
> For programmers when they are writing programs or translating
> from the user interface, I'd recommend a clean logic-based
> notation, such as a typed Datalog.    (09)

Yes, and this is basically what we are doing. Thing is we had to build a 
Column Store aspect to our DBMS first. This is now complete and we 
certainly have typed Datalog in our roadmap, that's been the case for a 
few years now.
>
> As for LOD, there are several distinct issues:  What is a good
> notation for annotating documents?  Should the annotations be
> included in the documents or in specialized metadocuments that
> point to the object-level documents?  Should the annotations
> be generated by people or by computer systems?  What are the
> best kinds of tools for processing those documents and their
> annotations for various kinds of applications?
>
> These are questions that the W3C should have debated back in 1994.    (010)

Yes.    (011)

> Instead, they edicted XML without any study of alternatives.  Then
> they edicted that RDF had to be written in XML despite the opinions
> of all the people who had any experience in knowledge representation
> (including Guha, Lassila, Hayes, etc.)    (012)

Yes, but XML and RDF/XML are now being pushed aside. Irrespective of 
what the W3C might try to mandate,
their is a broader self evolving Web taking shape that's driven by 
pragmatic solutions and industry experience.    (013)

Kingsley
>
> John
>
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>    (014)


--     (015)

Regards,    (016)

Kingsley Idehen 
Founder&  CEO
OpenLink Software
Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Personal Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter/Identi.ca handle: @kidehen
Google+ Profile: https://plus.google.com/112399767740508618350/about
LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kidehen    (017)

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