ongoing changes to the OWL 2 RDF vocabulary [WAS: [Announcement] OWL API 2.2.0 Available]

Hi list!

Sandro Hawke wrote:

>Just to be clear: OWL 2 is a work-in-progress and will keep changing for
>some months to come.  People not following closely might not notice
>that.  In a few months it should settle down, go through a few more
>review rounds, and finally be done.

To inform everyone (esp. tool builders) that Sandro's warning has to be
taken seriously: A lot of changes have been performed to the OWL/RDF syntax
[1] since the OWL working group has started. And it is realistic to assume
that further changes will follow. 

For example, the RDF syntax for sub property chains has changed
significantly since the original W3C submission (compare [1] with [2]). And
at the working group's last face to face meeting, the name of
"owl11:disjointObjectProperties" has been changed into
"owl11:propertyDisjointWith" [3]. Also at the last face to face meeting it
has been decided to completely remove the Object/Data distinction for OWL 2
property URIs (the "typed" vocabulary, see discussion starting at [4]). So,
for example, there won't be owl2:ObjectRestriction's and
owl2:DataRestriction's anymore. Further, it is debated whether to encode
axiom annotations and negative property assertions by means of RDF
reification or not [5][6]. So the respective classes "owl11:Axiom" and
"owl11:NegativePropertyAssertion" may or may not be removed in the near
future, and/or new vocabulary may or may not be introduced for encoding
these OWL 2 features. And right now, it is even discussed to drop the new
"owl2" (or "owl11") namespace prefix, and reuse the old "owl" prefix for the
new OWL 2 URIs, too [7].

Cheers,
Michael

[1] <http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-mapping-to-rdf>
[2] <http://www.w3.org/Submission/owl11-rdf_mapping>
[3]
<http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/F2F2_Minutes#Issue_96_OWL-1.1_vocabulary_na
ming_in_RDF_mapping_is_not_consistent>
[4] <http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/F2F2_Minutes#RDF_Mapping_Issues>
[5] <http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/tracker/issues/67>
[6] <http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/tracker/issues/81>
[7] <http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/tracker/issues/106>