[OEP] minutes of 5/26 telecon

Minutes of 5/26/2005 OEP telecon 1900 UT

Attendees: Chris_Welty, natasha_noy, Mike_Uschold, Evan_Wallace, 
aldo_gangemi
IRC log: http://www.w3.org/2005/05/26-swbp-irc

We discussed the latest n-ary relations editors draft of 24 May 
[http://smi-web.stanford.edu/people/noy/nAryRelations/n-aryRelations-2nd-WD.html], 
and Mike's extensive review.  Numerous minor changes and some rewordings 
suggested.  The main discussion centered on the name for Use Case 3, 
currently "network of individuals".  We tossed around the idea of using 
"Events", but convinced ourselves this was too specific, as the use case 
applies in general to n-ary relations for which the arguments are a) 
individuals and b) no individual is clearly the "subject". 

We resolved to take the question as homework.  Suggestions welcome.

We discussed the "unintended models" point as well.  It turns out that the 
comment about RDF treating two triples with the same S,P,O as "the same" 
is not accurate.  As a result, the point is more general than just n-ary 
relations, and is also more complicated than the bullet describes. We 
resolved to remove this bullet and move that point to the "pitfalls" note, 
with perhaps a forward reference to it.

Finally, we discussed the proposed standard vocabulary for reified 
relationships.  Natasha suggested that specific vocabulary for mapping OWL 
to other languages does not belong in this note, in particular the 
"argNum" property in the proposed vocabulary is for mapping n-ary 
relations to languages that use argument position to encode the role. The 
"use cases" for this standard vocabulary were 1) tools that treat reified 
n-ary relationships in some special way and thus need to know which ones 
they are, and 2) translating OWL & RDF to other languages that support 
n-ary relations in the syntax.  Chris claimed the vocabulary, with the 
argNum property, enabled translation to any other language.  Natasha and 
Evan suggested that UML "association classes" 
[http://www.agilemodeling.com/style/classDiagram.htm#Figure2] may require 
something different as well.  This wasn't clear.

We resolved to continue this discussion by email.  The general issue is 
whether the proposed standard vocabulary should be part of the N-ary note, 
or a separate note, and whether issues of language translation are in 
scope for the n-ary relations note. Someone (Evan?  Natasha?) will post 
something describing UML association classes in more detail (or more 
formally).  Aldo made some points about QCRs, but he had a bad connection 
and it was difficult to understand - he also promised to post something to 
the list.

Thanks all for the productive discussions.

Cheers,
Chris

Dr. Christopher A. Welty, Knowledge Structures Group
IBM Watson Research Center, 19 Skyline Dr., Hawthorne, NY  10532     USA   
 
Voice: +1 914.784.7055,  IBM T/L: 863.7055, Fax: +1 914.784.7455
Email: welty@watson.ibm.com, Web: 
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/w/welty/

Received on Thursday, 26 May 2005 20:55:05 UTC