imports

Being in a minority of one in the WG straw poll, (which is happening all 
too frequently :( )
I am obligated to try and state my case.

I am not opposed to clarifying the specification of imports. I believe a 
good case has been made that the OWL 1.0 documentation for imports is 
unclear.

I am opposed to adding to the specification of imports, specifically 
adding a mechanism to allow multiple alternate locations. Note: I 
believe that tools need such mechanisms, Jena has one; I simply do not 
believe it needs to be specified to permit interoperation, and hence it 
MUST NOT be specified (in terms of RFC 2119).

(Also note, this is not an issue that has been discussed in HP ... while 
I can't get a meaningful HP position until mid-January, I could try).


====

I believe that the argument towards specifying more hinges on 
difficulties with use cases like:

http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/Imports#Offline_editing
---
An ontologist is editing their related ontologies O1 and O2, and using 
two other ontologies O3, and O4, both on the Web. They are going 
off-line for a bit, and wish to copy all the relevant files to their 
hard disk and continue working.

When they go back on-line they wish to be able to continue working 
again, eventually publishing final versions of O1 and O2 on the web.
---


I do not see enough mention of the Web in the difficult bit of this use 
case (i.e. the offline editing, and the publication stage), to see this 
use case as in-scope for the W3C, and hence not in scope for a W3C WG.

As a Jena developer, I see this use case as in-scope for the Jena team 
(and I am glad other members of the team deal with it).


====


Tracker:

ISSUE-21
see also:
http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/Imports

Received on Thursday, 20 December 2007 12:50:58 UTC