Re: ANSI X3H4 standards for information interchange

• Mail folder: SRKB Mail
• Next message: sowa@watson.ibm.com: "ANSI X3H4 meetings"
• Previous message: David McAllester: "knowledge representation standards"
• In-reply-to: sowa@watson.ibm.com: "ANSI X3H4 standards for information interchange"

Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1991 16:43:57 PDT
From: Richard Fikes <fikes@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
Subject: Re: ANSI X3H4 standards for information interchange
To: sowa@watson.ibm.com
Cc: SRKB@isi.edu
In-reply-to: Your message of Wed, 17 Jul 91 14:01:49 EDT
Message-id: <MacMS.461.23010.fikes@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>

John,

Thanks for your message regarding the ANSI X3H4 standards effort.  As Tom has
said in his response, we would appreciate being kept informed of the status of
that effort as it proceeds.  My only comment at this point is to add my
agreement and emphasis to the following comment you made:

>Any standards that are proposed for database representations should also have
>a clean mapping to and from any proposed Knowledge Interchange Formats that
>may be developed by the AI community.

I would add specificity to your comment to the effect that I think it is
worthwhile for any standards proposed for database representations to have a
clean mapping to and from the specific Knowledge Interchange Format that is
being developed by the Interlingua working group.  In my opinion, pursuing such
compatability of proposed standards is an important step in both evaluating the
adequacy of the proposals and helping to assure their acceptance and
usefulness.

One of the primary roles that the Knowledge Interchange Format we are
developing may play is as a tool for describing the declarative semantics of
representation languages.  For example, describing the mapping from a proposed
database standard into KIF may be a useful way of specifying its semantics. 
Difficulties encountered in creating such a mapping are likely to indicate
inadequacies in either or both languages.

Richard
-------