[wg11-owl] Re: Paper: Criticism of the STEP Application Module approach

[David Leal]

Dear Colleagues,

Lothar's paper is very welcome, however it is more than a 'criticism of the
STEP application module approach'. Lothar's paper shows the problems that
are caused by the vague definitions of the concepts at the heart of STEP -
product, product category, product_definition_formation, and product_definition.

If we are to do anything with OWL, then we need concepts with precise
definitions. Lothar lists some concepts/terms that we should be able to
define, and suggests subclass-superclass relationships between them. What
about starting by defining these concepts, and creating a useful engineering
ontology.

This could then be related to other ontologies such as the ISO 15926
ontology (using the useful OWL properties sameIndividualAs and sameClassAs).
 
Best regards,
David 

p.s. Some existing definitions:

ISO 10303-1 defines the term *product* as 'a thing or substance produced by
a natural or artificial process'.

ISO 10303-41 ed-1 says 'A *product* is the identification and description,
in an application context, of a physically realisable object that is
produced by a process'.

ISO 10303-41 ed-2 says 'A *product* represents a product or class of products'.

ISO 10303-1017 says 'A *product* is the identification of a product or of a
type of product'.

(ISO 10303-41 also says 'A *person* is an individual human being'. The use
of 'is a' rather than 'represents a' or 'is the identification of' in this
case makes it easier to understand.)

At 23:06 05/06/2005 +0200, you wrote:
>Apologies for double postings.
>
>As promised please find attached a first draft of the paper
>
>  "Criticism of the STEP Application Module approach"
>
>as input for the discussions at the SC4 meeting in Valencia.
>For open e-mail discussions please use only modules at tc184-sc4.org (but not
WG3 and WG12).
>
>See you in Valencia
>
>Lothar
>
>-- 
>// Lothar Klein, LKSoftWare GmbH
>// Steinweg 1, 36093 Kuenzell, Germany
>// +49 661 933933-0, Fax: -2
>// url: http://www.lksoft.com
>Attachment Converted: c:\eudora\attach\WG12-N3776 Criticism of the STEP
Application Module approach.pdf
>

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David Leal
CAESAR Systems Limited
29 Somertrees Avenue
Lee London SE12 0BS
Tel:      +44 (0)20 8857 1095
e-mail:   david.leal at caesarsystems.co.uk
web site: http://www.caesarsystems.co.uk
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