RE: [VOC] Document kick-off

Just one comment comes to mind at this time. I think the "EDIT" stage of the process needs to be clarified, so that the vocabulary and ontology are distinguished. The ontology is intended to be a common framework for several vocabularies, including the DDR Core Vocabulary. We have a process to update our vocabulary, and where necessary, the updates are reflected in the ontology. In some cases the updates may be significant, such as introducing a new data type. In other cases we might extend our DDR Core Vocabulary by "borrowing" from something else that was added to the ontology from another source (e.g. a vocabulary under development by the OMA).

The ontology ensures that all the vocabularies (including ours) will interoperate, so that information associated with one vocabulary can be compared/composed with information associated with another vocabulary. That is not the case today because of the various (and subtle) differences in the representation of device information today, in the various repositories, both public and private.

With this in mind, I look at the comment on the process page:
  http://www.w3.org/2005/MWI/DDWG/wiki/CoreVocabularyProcess

It says:

EDIT: what happens here is simply the creation of the entry using a tool such as the Protege Ontology Editor. This will provide the strong data typing that is required for this vocabulary and will also provide the ease of a visual tool to produce the human-unreadable, but machine-friendly RDF ontology definition of the entry.

I propose this be changed to:

EDIT: Using a visual tool such as the Protégé Ontology Editor, together with information already in the common Ontology, a representation of the proposed update is created. Duplication and conflicts with existing Ontology entries are resolved at this stage. The result is submitted for inclusion in the common Ontology. This procedure ensures strong data typing for the vocabulary, and the use of a visual tool ensures easy production of RDF.

This raises a question about publication. When the process has produced an update that has been checked for technical things such as consistency with existing Ontology entries, can the updated DDR Core Vocabulary be published immediately, or does it have to wait for the Ontology to be updated? Or is the Ontology going to, by definition, the combination of the separate vocabularies, in which case the publication of an updated DDR Core Vocabulary is automatically a publication of an updated common Ontology?

I like the latter idea, but I wonder how it would work in practice. If this were to be the case, then the following comment in the process would be removed:

  "The result is submitted for inclusion in the common Ontology."

because the subsequent step of publication will automatically update the common Ontology.

Given that the common Ontology will be placed into the stewardship of the new UWA Working Group, it would be useful to know how they view this issue.

---Rotan.


-----Original Message-----
From: public-ddwg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-ddwg-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Andrea Trasatti
Sent: 16 April 2007 08:44
To: public-ddwg@w3.org
Subject: [VOC] Document kick-off


Following other document stubs that have been created, I created one  
for the Core Vocabulary [1].
I think the existing wiki-page [2] should be split in more pages and  
moved into the new structure.

Also, the initial process proposal should be reviewed and moved into  
the bigger document.

I look forward for feedback to the initial structure and texts and  
added.

It's not a lot of text, you should be able to read it quickly.

[1] http://www.w3.org/2005/MWI/DDWG/wiki/DeviceDescriptionCoreVocabulary
[2] http://www.w3.org/2005/MWI/DDWG/wiki/CoreVocabulary
[3] http://www.w3.org/2005/MWI/DDWG/wiki/CoreVocabularyProcess

Andrea Trasatti
Blog: http://trasatti.blogspot.com/

Received on Monday, 16 April 2007 10:07:37 UTC