Re: [ontolog-forum] Prospects made into Customers and Vice Versa

[Thomas Johnston <tmj44p@xxxxxxx>]

John,

I wasn't aware that "class" and "type" were so regimented in discussions of formal ontology. 

What I think would be useful is a pair of terms to distinguish "static sets" from "dynamic sets", and to relate the two concepts in something like this way:

(i) There is a temporal indexical on every set (usually implicit, usually being Now()). Call each such set a static set.

(ii) A dynamic set is a temporal sequence of static sets, in which each non-initial static set in the sequence is derived from the immediately preceding static set by applying an insert, update or delete statement to that immediately preceding static set (more generally, by transforming the state of that static set).

(iii) Could more than a single insert, update and/or delete statement be a combination of statements that effects the transition from static set X at time tn to static set X at time tn+1? Yes. The boundary is marked by atomic units of work, sets of one or more transactions with the ACID properties.

On Monday, October 26, 2015 10:56 AM, John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Pat and David,

I agree with your technical distinctions.  And they are part of the
reason why the word 'type' is more appropriate than 'class' for
specifying an ontology.  If it's a good ontology (which most authors
would hope for), it's likely to be used in many applications.

A type is expected to have different members in different contexts.
But a class is a set that is specified by a type (represented
by a monadic predicate).  If you use the ontology in different
applications, the type would be the same, but the set would probably
be different.

Unfortunately, OWL is stuck with the word class.  Therefore,
you need to add qualifiers that distinguish the context.

But given the rapid adoption rate of Schema.org, I expect
Schema.org terminology to become the de facto standard.

Recommendation:  If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

John

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