Introduction (Holger Knublauch)

Just to formally introduce myself to this group, I am the lead developer 
at TopQuadrant and helped create the TopBraid product line (mostly 
RDF/OWL/SKOS editing tools and data transformation engines). Along the 
way I created (and implemented tool support for) several languages that 
apply semantic web technology to use cases that go beyond the current 
official standards, including SPIN (SPARQL-based rules and constraints), 
SPARQLMotion (SPARQL-based workflow engine) and SPARQL Web Pages 
(HTML/JSON/XML generation from templates).

My position to this working group has been documented in various 
discussions on the previous mailing list. In a nutshell, I hope we can 
together create the next big step for the semantic web vision. I believe 
the proposed technologies are largely complementary to each other, and 
we should merge the best ideas of each to create a modeling language 
that is more compatible to the mainstream, and more expressive and 
pragmatic than previous attempts (that were rather driven by theory). In 
particular, my proposal is to

- use something like Resource Shapes as a high-level vocabulary for the 
most frequently used constraint and modeling patterns
- use something like SPIN as the metamodel for that vocabulary
- if desirable, use something like the ShExC as a compact syntax for the 
high-level vocabulary

Theoretically the group could also work on defining closed-world 
semantics for OWL, but I see this as a rather orthogonal topic to the 
design above. Furthermore I would not be surprised if we faced serious 
resistance against overloading OWL (and creating two parallel 
interpretations of the same vocabulary). I therefore think a fresh start 
will be better than trying to patch a language that already has such a 
long history. Having said this, several SPARQL-based implementations of 
constraint checking for OWL already exist, so that existing ontologies 
can be leveraged, if that is safe.

I am looking forward to working with you all! Apologies in advance if my 
brain is not fully operational during the meetings - my (Queensland) 
time zone means that I may call in the middle of the night.

Holger

http://knublauch.com

Received on Wednesday, 15 October 2014 22:54:08 UTC