SUO: RE: SUO Comment #3
"West, Matthew MR SSI-GPEA-UK" wrote:
>
> Dear James,
>
> The point to be careful of in the comment below is not to interpret the
> requirement as meaning that the SUO should not contain anything that cannot
> be "compiled" into a more restrictive format such as XML. Otherwise there is
> no problem.
Matt makes a good point, but there is another point lurking here. In
order for the statement "compiled into X" (X /= SUO language) to be
meaningful, we have to define what "compiled" means. For example, it
is trivial to simply strip out the type-like constants out of the SUO
ontology and embed them in RDF, or XML-schema, or RDF-schema, or
whatever. However, you'll lose semantics in the process. So you have
three choices: 1) characterize just what kinds of loss occur and whether
or not you can live with them; 2) make sure the target language is
as expressive as the SUO standard; or 3) drop the requirement and face
the possibility that nobody will use the SUO.
Now, (2) isn't going to happen with any of the RDF-y/XML-y standards
likely to gain popular acceptance in the near future, and I assume that
nobody wants (3) because otherwise we'd be wasting our time. That
leaves (1) - a monumentally hard job. Comments?
...bill