- From: Jim Hendler <hendler@cs.umd.edu>
- Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 12:23:40 -0500
- To: ewallace@cme.nist.gov, public-owl-dev@w3.org
I have been talking to various and sundry about the OWL 1.1 issue and issues of usability of the current documents for those wishing to continue to use existing syntax or wishing to upgrade existing documents that do not use any of the new approaches to syntax in the documents to date. I've raised these issues before, won't do so again (except to say the usability of the current documents for non-developers is worse than I thought). There is, however, an issue that arose in these conversations which I think has a lot of impact on the chartering of the group - is the new WG working on the next version of OWL or simply on a set of extensions to the current OWL? If the first case, then the documentation requirements on this WG are quite high. A user going to http://www.w3.0rg/2004/OWL would need to find complete documentation of OWL, not just of the OWL 1.1 extensions. This would require the WG taking ownership of current documents and either extending them as they are (i.e. add new sections on the new features) or changing them (for example, Bijan raised the issue in earlier email as to whether it made more sense to extend the previous model theory or to change it) - but in the latter case, the whole of OWL, not just the extensions must be in the new documents (Which would, in effect, become the only OWL documents). In the second case, the user would come to the OWL site and find the original documents plus some new ones (so the current 6 documents would remain, with new documents added). In this case, the WG would likely be called somethign like the "OWL Extensions" WG and the new documents would reflect that in their names. In this case, only those things in previous versions which were not backwards compatible, or which were changed in some major way, would need to be indicated in the previous documents (and note, by W3C process/policy changing backward compatibility, esp. normative documents, is a very high bar). This may seem like a minor distinction, but I think it has a major impact on the WG. In the first case, the group is going beyond simply creating and documenting some new features, it is taking responsibility for the redefinition of the language. This puts a higher requirement on the documentation issues, requires maintaining (for example) the issues list, creating new test cases and use cases, etc. I would not oppose the group doing this, but I am HIGHLY skeptical that a WG could do this in 1 year without face to face meetings. In addition, if the group made this choice, I believe the documents would become deliverables of the WG (they would have to be) so the WG would be required to deliver these - couldn't say "we decided not to" if time grew short. In the second case, I think I believe the work could be done in a year, although I still have my doubts (expressed in previous emails). If the WG participants are willing to mostly be bound to what is now called OWL 1.1, and the deliverables are essentially just more readable versions of the current documents (and some of the necessary extensions, like the new namespace document and list of the owl vocabulary added) then maybe this would work. In this case, however, the charter as written is much too broad - this is not the charter for extending an existing langauge with new features, but for doing significantly more work than that. Oh yeah, meant to mention that in either case, the WG also should specify relationship to the Ontology Engineering notes that were produced by the SWBPD WG - obviously a lot of features of OWL 1.1 change the approach to the things in those notes (for example, punning obviously has a major impact on the metamodeling note, etc.) Anyway, either way I think there needs to be more care paid to the deliverables "vs" the timing - either less deliverables or a more realistic calendar (and more realistic expectations about the amount of work the WG will need to do) seem to me called for. As I've learned by hard experience, paying attention to issues of deliverables and timing in advance has a big impact on the success of a WG - if the new group is to go forward, I think more care and effort has to go into this. -Jim H. -- How can you be in two places at once if you're not anywhere at all? (Firesign Theatre, 1969) Prof James Hendler http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~hendler Tetherless World Constellation Chair 301-405-2696 (work) Computer Science Dept 301-405-6707 (Fax) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY 12180
Received on Monday, 12 February 2007 17:23:59 UTC