Re: Question on API paper

Dear Felix,

> I have read
> http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/phillip.lord/download/publications/cooking03.pdf
> and have a general question about the paper: how is it related to the
> API which we are supposed to produce?

OWL is indeed a language for representing ontologies. The OWL API is 
therefore the programmatic access to manipulate an ontology, i.e. 
creating classes, properties and individuals. I think it is relevant 
because this is an example of building an API on top of a model.

> The paper describes - if I
> understand correctly - an API to access ontologies, e.g. query, update,
> serialization etc. However I think we are supposed to create an API for
> accessing *metadata*, and our API relies on an ontology (thinking of
> issues 6113, we still have find out how the relation is). I am probably
> missing something, so many thanks in advance for the clarification.

Well, this is the difference between classes and instances.
The OWL API allows to access, create, delete, modify classes, properties 
and individuals of an ontology. The API we should design should allow to 
access, create, delete, modify metadata, that is, instances of classes 
and properties defined in the 'Media Annotation Ontology' (individuals 
in the OWL terminology). The overlap is thus that both API handle 
individuals.
Best regards.

   Raphaël

-- 
Raphaël Troncy
CWI (Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science),
Kruislaan 413, 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: raphael.troncy@cwi.nl & raphael.troncy@gmail.com
Tel: +31 (0)20 - 592 4093
Fax: +31 (0)20 - 592 4312
Web: http://www.cwi.nl/~troncy/

Received on Thursday, 16 October 2008 10:49:56 UTC