Re: OWL without RDF

Bill - I think you see the key point - these things are not mutually 
exclusive in any way - high end ontology use needs some of the OWL 
1.1 functionality, but wider adoption is likely to come in the data 
integration space, where a lot can be done with the simpler "OWL 
Mini" (or OWL Fast, or OWL Prime, or OWLET, or whatever it might end 
up being called).
  btw, the "?" marks in the graph didn't mean things were being left 
out, it meant we weren't sure if including them would cause scaling 
problems - I expect we will keep data and object type properties 
because a lot of current tools support that distinction (for example 
tools which turn OWL classes into web forms generally have a 
different handling of each of these)
  Work on this continues apace
  JH
p.s. There are some resource contention issues which I think are 
relatively easily worked out, but there's also some difference in the 
philosophy between the current OWL 1.1 people and the people I 
mention working on the simpler OWL - but that's mostly because we've 
been working in different spaces.

At 7:31 PM -0500 11/16/06, William Bug wrote:
Many thanks, Jim.

I saw posts by you and others - as well as links to more detailed - 
and very recent - discussions.

These are all very helpful.

I was particularly interested in the proposal you, Ora Lassilla, and 
others have worked on to "absorb" much of the OWL Lite constructs 
into RDF++ (I believe that is the name being used - two proposals - 
the summary of which you give here - 
<http://www.nabble.com/perspectives-on-OWL-v.next-and-RDF-tf2624829.html>http://www.nabble.com/perspectives-on-OWL-v.next-and-RDF-tf2624829.html) 
- minus many of the class axioms and Datatype Properties, but 
including owl:disjointWith.

I recall reading some on this in the past, but given these issues 
related to OWL 1.1, those proposals take on a whole new semantic 
value now - pun[ning] intended.	;-)

I also can definitely see the sense in the argument when trying to 
determine where to go next, there is need to achieve a balance 
between simplicity to catalyze wider adoption and the need to provide 
new functionality to a subset of users.  I think its actually a four 
way balance:
	simplicity - robustness - performance/scalability - expressivity

These characteristics are not necessarily exclusive of - or the 
inverse of - one another, though usually performance scales with the 
inverse of expressivity, at least when comparing across very large 
differences in expressivity.

The position you choose to target in this space really depends on 
what you are trying to achieve, obviously.

Cheers,
Bill


On Nov 16, 2006, at 3:01 PM, Jim Hendler wrote:

actually, we're trying to move the discussion to 
<mailto:public-owl-dev@w3.org>public-owl-dev@w3.org
there's a thread there that expresses some of my concerns about 
moving away from the OWL syntax - given that the primary tools out 
there right now still assume the OWL is integrated with the RDF 
graph...

At 2:52 PM -0500 11/16/06, William Bug wrote:
As I expected, the experts are listening.  :-)

Many thanks, Holger.  That's extremely important to know.

I will dig into the thread for more detail.  One main concern would 
be whether that was just a token gesture to stay compatible for now, 
as opposed to a commitment to remain compatible, until or unless an 
effective alternative is provided to representing very large 
knowledgebases in RDF.

I think more than anything I was a bit overwhelmed by the collective 
picture given by those half-dozen or so presentations from last 
week's meeting.  The meeting seemed "fresh" enough, so that it could 
be expected to be reflective of the status quo.  I assume there was 
much heated discussion during the meeting, that would have filled out 
such detail - or such has been carried out on the owl-dev list.

I suppose it's also a good idea to dig into the OWL Extensions list 
hosted by Jim Hendler's lab:
	        <http://lists.mindswap.org/mailman/listinfo/owl>http://lists.mindswap.org/mailman/listinfo/owl

Cheers,
Bill


On Nov 16, 2006, at 2:33 PM, Holger Knublauch wrote:


However, I'd point out, in the last document, where they describe a 
mapping of OWL 1.1 to RDF, they make the following caveat:
Not every OWL 1.1 ontology can be serialized in RDF. In particular, 
ontologies using the following features of OWL 1.1 cannot be 
serialized:
    1. punning and
    2. annotations on axioms.


Please see a recent thread on the public-owl-dev mailing list about 
this: <http://www.nabble.com/Limitations-of-OWL-1.1-to-RDF-mapping-tf2639224.html>http://www.nabble.com/Limitations-of-OWL-1.1-to-RDF-mapping-tf2639224.html

Bijan states:
"The RDF mapping has lagged behind the others, but the plan is to
extend the mapping to cover these cases."

Holger
TopQuadrant, Inc.
<http://www.topbraidcomposer.com>http://www.topbraidcomposer.com
<http://composing-the-semantic-web.blogspot.com>http://composing-the-semantic-web.blogspot.com/


Bill Bug
Senior Research Analyst/Ontological Engineer

Laboratory for Bioimaging  & Anatomical Informatics
www.neuroterrain.org
Department of Neurobiology & Anatomy
Drexel University College of Medicine
2900 Queen Lane
Philadelphia, PA    19129
215 991 8430 (ph)
610 457 0443 (mobile)
215 843 9367 (fax)


Please Note: I now have a new email 
- <mailto:William.Bug@DrexelMed.edu>William.Bug@DrexelMed.edu


--
Prof James Hendler	      	        	         
	        <mailto:hendler@cs.umd.edu>hendler@cs.umd.edu
Dept of Computer Science	      	         
	        <http://www.cs.umd.edu/~hendler>http://www.cs.umd.edu/~hendler
AV Williams Bldg	  	        	         
	        301-405-2696 (work)
Univ of Maryland	     	        	         
	        301-405-6707 (Fax)
College Park, MD 20853 USA


Bill Bug
Senior Research Analyst/Ontological Engineer

Laboratory for Bioimaging  & Anatomical Informatics
www.neuroterrain.org
Department of Neurobiology & Anatomy
Drexel University College of Medicine
2900 Queen Lane
Philadelphia, PA    19129
215 991 8430 (ph)
610 457 0443 (mobile)
215 843 9367 (fax)


Please Note: I now have a new email - 
<mailto:William.Bug@DrexelMed.edu>William.Bug@DrexelMed.edu


-- 
Prof James Hendler				hendler@cs.umd.edu
Dept of Computer Science			http://www.cs.umd.edu/~hendler
AV Williams Bldg				301-405-2696 (work)
Univ of Maryland				301-405-6707 (Fax)
College Park, MD 20853 USA

Received on Friday, 17 November 2006 00:58:42 UTC