<snip>
The history of computing is the history of "design patterns" at one
level that eventually get built into "higher level languages" at the
next level of abstraction up.
I think I have a less optimistic view of progress in computer
science. For example, many of the paradigmatic GoF design patterns
are there to make up for deficiencies in the OO languages that
*succeeded* more expressive and abstract functional languages.
Amen to that. And we are living through an exactly similar transition
in representational languages, where DLs are re-inventing axioms of
classical logic.
it's not quite re-inventing, although it may be that "new features added
to a language" are sometimes being sold as if they were novel. As for
the n-aries in DLs (which are indeed trivial in CL), that is possible in
DLs in theory for over 10 years and in software with iCOM for >7 years
-- and do the automated reasoning over it, unlike with several other
logics.
I like more expressivity as well, but then, I'm not implementing systems
where I'd have to wait 'long' for query answers or see my computer hang
upon classifying 1 instance in an 50-concept small ontology (with the
latest pellet for owl 1.1). I did try to load in Protégé and SWOOP the
FMA-lite, which is a 43MB OWL file. It failed. Reasoning over sections
of the FMA that take into account only some constructors is possible
[1], which brings us back to your earlier comment that "people have
argued against more expressive languages, in fact have argued with great
force and vehemence,": if we have to chop up large ontologies anyway in
order to be able to reason over them, we might as well do that in a
structured manner with some simpler languages and (semi-)automated
conversions for "dumbing down" a large and/or rich ontology to some
slimmed version that is computationally tractable; that is, taking best
of 'both worlds' with expressivity where desired/needed and performance
where needed/desired.
[1] Zhang S, Bodenreider O, Golbreich C. Experience in reasoning with
the Foundational Model of Anatomy in OWL-DL. In:Pacific Symposium on
Biocomputing 2006, Altman RB, Dunker AK, Hunter L, Murray TA, Klein TE,
(Eds.). World Scientific, 2006, 200-211.
http://helix-web.stanford.edu/psb06/zhang_s.pdf
regards,
marijke
C. Maria Keet
KRDB Research Centre
Faculty of Computer Science
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
Piazza Domenicani 3
39100 Bozen-Bolzano
Italy
tel: +39 04710 16128
fax: +39 04710 16009
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