Re: OWL1.1 APis

On Dec 6, 2006, at 10:52 AM, Dave Reynolds wrote:

> Holger Knublauch wrote:
>
>
>>> Well, OWL API support will definitely be there. We're already  
>>> happier having a non-fame based level (the framey flavor is  
>>> supported as views over the axiomatic ones). Jena support should  
>>> be straightforward and I imagine that Holger, using Jena, could  
>>> comment more about that.
>>>
>> Yes, as already written elsewhere [1], all triple-based APIs such  
>> as Jena and Sesame already support OWL 1.1 on a syntactic level,  
>> and Evren has given an example [2] on how to build OWL 1.1  
>> constructs with Jena. The Jena mailing list may be more helpful on  
>> insights on the Jena developers' strategy for OWL 1.1, but it  
>> would be fairly straight forward to extend the higher level Jena  
>> OntModel API with 1.1 specific classes.
>>
>
> In principle you may be right though some aspects look a little  
> tricky to tie to up with our existing API support (handling of  
> datatypes for example).
>
>> In how far they would want to support OWL 1.1 reasoning in their  
>> built-in reasoners is certainly a different question,
>
> Had OWL 1.1 had some level of OWL/full compatibility (which I guess  
> would have required the RDF mapping to directly expose the punning)  
> then some Jena native reasoning support might have made sense.
> However, given how big a break OWL 1.1 is from OWL then it's not  
> clear to me that we can do anything useful on that front in a  
> sufficiently backward compatible way.

I'm not sure I understand this line of reasoning. I presume that  
"Jena native reasoning support" refers to existing rule engines 
+rulesets bundled with Jena (correct me if I'm wrong, please). The  
*engines* seem to me to be perfectly generic. The rulesets clearly  
aren't, being built for specific fragments. However, the OWL 1.1  
tractable fragments document identifies a *number* of fragments of  
OWLDL/1.1 which are suitable for impelmentation over a datalog or  
relational engine (e.g., DLP, EL++, hornSHIQ for datalog, and DL Lite  
for relational). So, it would be *quite* straightforward to produce  
additional Jena reasoners which use the underlying rule engines for  
these fragments. Moreover, it would clearly be possible to extend  
some of these reasoners to deal with some of the extended features of  
OWL 1.1 in a "reasonable" manner. (Interest has already been  
expressed in extending the OWL Full semantics to deal some of these  
features; assuming that this happens, "reasonable" could be  
interpreted as "consistent with the semantics".)

> > but with
> > Pellet's Jena bridge this should not really be a show stopper for  
> Jena
> > users.
>
> Quite so.

And we are all in (essential) agreement :)

Cheers,
Bijan.

Received on Sunday, 10 December 2006 20:08:21 UTC