Requirements: versioning and corrections

["Stephen Green" <stephen.green@documentengineeringservices.com>]

In line with my previous discussion of requirements
for versioning for the SET approach to ontological
management of contexts for document interoperability
how about we write a white paper or position paper
to propose a solution if the problem I have suggested
does in fact exist.

I would propose something along the following lines:

As a real example take the latest UBL 2.0 errata 01
specification which among other things caters for
an error in the BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA code.
Say there is an ontology which includes the old code:
when making any inferences using this ontology
a reasoner will report a certain value for BOSNIA
but not one for BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA. Now
feed the reasoner with an ontology based on the
update package (errata) and run the reasoner
again. If OWL is used, the original code information
cannot just using OWL be eliminated from the
inferences. Instead the reasoner will now report
still report that BOSNIA has code 'AND' (this is the
error) and it may also have a correspondence
between BOSNIA and BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
such that it reports two values for BOSNIA - the
old, erroneous one and the new, correct one.

What I would propose as a solution is that there
be a standard to list in order the ontologies by
namespaces or other universally unique IDs in the
order they have to be entered into a completely
clean knowledgebase immediately prior to
running the reasoner after which the knowledgebase
is either frozen or cleared - when OWL is used.
This proposed standard would amount to a kind of
reasoner's knowledgebase recipe. It would ensure
a certain degree of uniformity across implementations
(though reasoners may differ in their inferences
perhaps). It would also allow for conformance testing
of implementations. One possible recipe language
might be a test assertions markup (includes
prerequisites, and formal predicates).


Does this ring true at all with SET TC experiences
with reasoners and knowledgebases with OWL?

All the best

Steve

-- 
Stephen D. Green

Partner
SystML, http://www.systml.co.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 117 9541606
Associate Director
Document Engineering Services
http://www.documentengineeringservices.com

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+22:37 .. and voice