[LC Response] To Ralf Moeller Re: OWL2

Dear Ralf,

Thank you for your message
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-owl-comments/2009Jan/0059.html>
on the OWL 2 Web Ontology Language last call drafts.  This response
addresses the second and third parts of your message. 


OWL does not address the RDF/XML syntax.  As far as OWL is
concerned RDF documents are a source of RDF graphs (i.e., sets of
triples).  The only place where RDF/XML is used is as a syntax for RDF
graphs, and as far as OWL is concerned it is the RDF graph that is
important, not the RDF/XML surface syntax.

The example that you have in your message appears to correspond fairly
closely to the functional syntax 
  DatatypeRestriction(xsd:nonNegativeInteger owl2:minExclusive "65"^^xsd:int)
which translates into the following triples
  _:x rdf:type owl:DataRange
  _:x owl:onDataType xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  _:x owl:withRestrictions _:l1
  _:l1 rdf:first _:y1
  _:l1 rdf:next rdf:nil
  _:y1 owl:minExclusive "65"^^xsd:int
which can be written in RDF/XML (modulo various XML stuff) as
  <owl:DataRange>
    <owl:onDataType rdf:resource="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger" />
    <owl:withRestrictions  rdf:parseType="Collection">
       <rdf:Description>
          <owl2:minExclusive rdf:datatype="&xsd;int">65</owl2:minExclusive>
       </rdf:Description>
    </owl:withRestrictions>
  </owl:DataRange>
This does not appear to be any better or worse than many other ways of
expressing the syntax, and does not require an extra vocabulary element
just to take the place of the rdf:Description, whose presence here
appears to be benign.


Thank you very much for bringing it to our attention that we forgot to
complete our work on naming datatypes.  The Working Group has decided to
allow the naming of datatypes in OWL 2 ontologies.  In OWL 2 DL
ontologies, this naming is restricted so that each datatype not in the
datatype map names a single expression and does not involve a loop.

There will be changes to several WG documents to effect this change.
Working versions of all these documents can be reached from the WG Wiki
at http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/OWL_Working_Group


Please acknowledge receipt of this email to
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are satisfied with the working group's response to your comment. 

Regards,
Peter F. Patel-Schneider
on behalf of the W3C OWL Working Group

Received on Wednesday, 18 March 2009 19:01:16 UTC