Re: LANG: owl:ontology

From: "Christopher Welty" <welty@us.ibm.com>
Subject: Re: LANG: owl:ontology
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2002 22:45:16 -0400

> 
> As this dicsussion moves on, I'm becoming more confused.  Isn't a 
> daml:ontology simply a tag that wraps all the statements that are "in" the 
> ontology? 
> 
> -Chris

No, and it can't be, because that would not be legal RDF.

DAML+OIL ontologies look like

<rdf:RDF ...>

<daml:Ontology>
  <daml:imports ...>
</daml:Ontology>

<daml:Class foo>
 ....
</daml:Class>

...

</rdf:RDF>


This cannot be transformed into


<rdf:RDF ...>

<daml:Ontology>
  <daml:imports ...>

  <daml:Class foo>
    ....
  </daml:Class>

   ...

</daml:Ontology>


</rdf:RDF>

because it would break the ``striping'' of RDF.


However, in some sense, a DAML+OIL ontology *has* a tag that wraps all the
statements that are "in" the ontology (and the ontology header elements).
The tag is the rdf:RDF tag that encloses all RDF documents.


peter