syntax for modules of networks in DOL

[mcodescu]

Given a list of ontologies and a list of alignments between them, we want to extract from each ontology O a module M of the signature generated by all symbols of O that appear in the correspondences of the alignments. Thus, the alignments involving O remain valid for M , and we can build a network whose elements are the modules and the alignments.

I was thinking to add modules of networks as a new constructor for networks, using the syntax modules of O1, ..., On for A1, ...Am. The notion does not seem to make sense for other mappings than alignments, so Ai must be alignments.

[tillmo]

I would prefer the syntax proposed in #1626, because it is shorter and re-uses networks better. I agree that we must restrict ourselves to relational networks (i.e. consisting of alignments only). But this could also be imposed as a static semantic condition for #1626. In this light, do you see any advantage of your notation over #1626?

[mcodescu]

At the moment, networks don't know their elements, all we store is the diagram of the network. If we write extract N we would have to check that N contains only alignments or sub-networks containing only alignments. Yes, one can implement such a check and use extract N.