RDF/XML and charter - WG please note (was UPDATE: why RDF syntax is not suitable for OWL)

At 6:56 PM -0500 2/13/02, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
>Here are my current thoughts on why OWL should not use the same syntax as
>RDF, no matter what we do with the semantics.
>
>Peter F. Patel-Schneider
>Bell Labs Research

WOWG members -
   A decision to move away from RDF syntax would be a significant 
departure from DAML+OIL and thus a major stretching of our charter. 
It is probably permissible (would need to discuss w/Guus and get 
approval of W3C-semweb-CG as well) but would need significant 
justification and a firm consensus that this is clearly preferred by 
all the members who agree that this is a significant technical 
improvement over DAML+OIL.  This particularly includes those people 
building web tools (who already have a vested stake in that syntax) 
and those who are also on the RDF Core WG as well as WOWG.
  Note also that Frank van Harmelen pointed out at the f2f that we could
use a different presentation format (like N3, ntriples, something 
frame-like, etc.) and let parsers and tools build appropriate RDF. 
Again, strong evidence would need to be presented that this is 
insufficient or problematic in some compelling ways. Thus, "ugliness" 
of representation is not a compelling argument.
  Also, please note that the charter mandates XML compliance, and thus 
if anyone wants to go further than what Peter has suggested and scrap 
XML as well, that would be ruled out of charter.
  -Jim H.


-- 
Professor James Hendler				  hendler@cs.umd.edu
Director, Semantic Web and Agent Technologies	  301-405-2696
Maryland Information and Network Dynamics Lab.	  301-405-6707 (Fax)
AV Williams Building, Univ of Maryland		  College Park, MD 20742
http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/hendler

Received on Thursday, 14 February 2002 19:56:16 UTC