Re: Namespace of ODRL

Dear all,

we are surprised about the decision to use a single namespace for the
ODRL Ontology. We still recommend multiple namespaces like Mo proposed
in a previous mail. We agree that this approach seems more complicated
at the first sight, but it has several advantages for the structure and
the vocabulary of ODRL.

First, using different namespaces for the basic structure and for each
set of vocabulary terms eases the process of managing these terms.
Different namespaces would help to get a very clear distinction between
the different vocabularies. It is not surprising that other ontologies
such as KAoS [1] also use separate namespaces.

Second, the use of different namespaces reduces the possibility of name
clashes. For example, a term X in the action vocabulary can be
distinguished from a different term X in the constraint vocabulary.
Although both terms have the same name, they can only be distinguished
from each other based on their respective namespace. If the terms would
be contained within a single namespace, their distinction would be
impossible. However, using the same term for both actions and
constraints should be avoided anyway.

Third, each namespace can be used as a URL providing exactly those terms
associated with the namespace. For example, a namespace unifying all
actions can also be used as an URL to access all action terms. Thus, by
"downloading" the namespace, a user would directly see which terms can
be used as actions. A single namespace combining all terms does not
support this. Instead, it would be harder to distinguish actions from
constraints: A mixture of different vocabulary terms does not ease their
usage.

Finally, the use of ODRL should not get more complicated when using
different namespaces. Instead, different namespaces can even help the
process of creating ODRL policies. A policy editing tool could easily
distinguish between actions, constraints, and other terms based on their
namespaces. Such a tool could then help to avoid an accidental mix-up of
terms from different namespaces. Moreover, the use of different
namespaces would even help to develop such an editing tool in the first
place.

Please note that we are a scientific working group and not an
business-oriented working group and it might be easier to make
modifications in a scientific approach. However, we think that this
modification will have a lot of advantages also in the business-oriented
scope. Thus, we suggest discussing the namespace modifications for a
second time and not just decide on it.


Regards,

Stefan Becker, Benjamin Hück, Katharina Naujokat, Andreas Kasten and
Arne F. Schmeiser

Received on Monday, 5 August 2013 21:22:59 UTC