RE: Are we losing out because of grammars? (Re: Schema ambiguitydetection algorithm for RELAX (1/4))

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

In some articles I've been reading on knowledge bases 
and ontologies (different things, it turns out), the 
authors are careful to explain the notion of the 
minimal ontological commitment.  One of these is that 
a minimal ontolgy might have a concept for say, 
rates, but leave out the actual encodings.  Thus, 
the rule for which rate is to be calculated might 
depend on local rules.  This is part of the layering 
issue and also infers that separating the roles of 
schemas and ontologies is a useful thing to do.  

A pattern match will only tell you something 
about the string or encoding.  It won't tell 
you much about the semantic unless that pattern 
has a prior agreement somewhere (the problem 
of the communicative a priori is usually 
solved by bootstrapping).  I don't believe 
we "lose out" because of grammars.  We have 
to decide the roles for each means in our 
systems, not eliminate means.

Len Bullard
Intergraph Public Safety
clbullar@ingr.com
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas B. Passin [mailto:tpassin@home.com]

In Linda, one system or program inserts a tuple into the shared tuple space.
That's what I meant by "puts out".

Yes, you might match a pattern, but depending on the field contents the
match
could be by running a query and inserting the results.  Suppose I ask for
the
interest rate and I meant a simple rate, but you return the yearly
compounded
rate instead because "interest_rate" was requested and you could supply one.
I know that's simplistic, I'm just trying to boil things down to simplicity.

Cheers,

Tom P