[LC response] To Alan Rector

Dear Alan,

Thank you for your comment
      <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-owl-comments/ 
2008Dec/0000.html>
      <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-owl-comments/ 
2009Jan/0009.html>
on the OWL 2 Web Ontology Language last call drafts.

The working group has decided to make no change to OWL 2 in response  
to your comment. While we appreciate the use cases raised in your  
comment, we found that the specification and technical difficulties  
of adding such a feature at this time outweigh the benefits it would  
bring, esp. given the existence of various workarounds. For example:

    * One could embed class expressions in literals, i.e., xsd:string  
or XMLLiteral. While you point out that "strings rust", one could  
introduce a named subtype of xsd:string that would allow tools, such  
as Protege 4, to syntax check the expressions.

    * One could introduce a named class for the expression. To avoid  
cluttering the class hierarchy with these classes, one could either  
annotate the axioms, or use a distinguished naming scheme, or make  
them subclasses of a certain class.

    * In OWL Full, this is available in certain forms. So one could  
use OWL Full to guide an extension.

The main issue with such workarounds is, of course, interoperability.  
However, we feel confident that reasonable interoperability could be  
accomplished by your publishing details of the annotations (or naming  
scheme, or subtype) and having your popular tools support it.

Please acknowledge receipt of this email to <mailto:public-owl- 
comments@w3.org> (replying to this email should suffice). In your  
acknowledgment please let us know whether or not you are satisfied  
with the working group's response to your comment.

Regards,
Bijan Parsia
on behalf of the W3C OWL Working Group

Received on Thursday, 29 January 2009 13:38:18 UTC