OWL 2 roadmap

The OWL 2 document suite has a large number of formats and top-level  
concepts, and I found myself getting lost, so I prepared a map for  
myself (PDF attached).

My 'public comment' is: Please consider providing the community with a  
roadmap of this kind.

The format is ersatz, inspired not by UML but by the notation of  
category theory (in case that means anything to whoever's reading this).

One question this raised for me is whether a functional-style syntax  
document can be imported (or in webarch-ese: whether an OWL 2  
processor MUST be able to process an ontology whose only  
representation is in functional-style syntax). Similarly for OWL/XML.  
These questions are the two links labeled "is a ??". I didn't find an  
answer in the drafts, but then I haven't read everything.

I haven't checked to see whether all of the information that's in this  
diagram, such as the correct "type" of every transformation, is in the  
drafts. For example, I'm not sure that one can infer from the direct  
semantics that the semantics of a collection of ontologies is the  
semantics of the union of the things (axioms etc) in the ontologies in  
the collection, or that no semantics is given for ontology collections  
that are not imports closed.

I think there are subtleties around imports that I don't understand  
and aren't captured by the diagram.

Many of the boxes and arrows could be labeled with or linked to the  
various documents, e.g. 'OWL/XML document' to the specification for  
OWL/XML.

If the diagram reflects some misunderstanding of mine that would not  
have been cleared up by reading all of the drafts, that would be an  
opportunity to improve one or more of them.

Best
Jonathan

Received on Saturday, 31 January 2009 01:18:47 UTC