Re: OWL2 serialized as JSON?

On Apr 6, 2011, at 4:46 AM, Bob Ferris wrote:

> Hi Peter,
> 
> On 4/6/2011 1:18 PM, Peter Frederick Patel-Schneider wrote:
>> From: Bob Ferris<zazi@elbklang.net>
>> Subject: Re: OWL2 serialized as JSON?
>> Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2011 03:47:20 -0500
>> 
>>> Hi Chris,
>>> 
>>> On 4/5/2011 11:29 PM, Chris Mungall wrote:
>>>> Is there a de-facto standard way of serializing OWL2 as JSON? I'm aware of RDF-over-JSON efforts, but something more OWL-centric would suit my purposes better.
>>>> 
>>>> I recall a lightning talk at OWLED2007 that showed something like Manchester Syntax in JSON, but I don't know if this idea has advanced further. I think ideally there might be a frame-style modeled after MS (but including GCIs), and an axiom-style modeled after the functional syntax. It seems the most predictable way to do the latter would be to have a single object per axiom, and to use the non-terminals on the RHS of the production rules as names in the name-value pairs.
>>>> 
>>>> I'm hoping someone has already provided a specification - and/or an OWLAPI implementation?
>>> 
>>> I'm not aware of any OWL2/JSON serialization. However, I'm wondering
>>> whether this is really necessary, since OWL can be represented via the
>>> knowledge representation structure RDF Model quite well. Today there are
>>> multiple proposals for RDF/JSON serialization (see [1]) available and
>>> the new RDF WG is working on a standard recommendation. Maybe you should
>>> wait for this.
>>> What are the benefits of having a separate OWL2/JSON serialization format?
>>> 
>>> Cheers,
>>> Bob
>>> 
>>> [1] http://www.w3.org/2011/rdf-wg/wiki/JSON-Serialization-Examples

Thanks for the link. So these are alternative candidate serializations, none of which have yet been blessed in any way?

>> A direct transformation from OWL axioms to JSON would be much more
>> readable than first going through RDF.  There would be other advantages,
>> including size.

This is especially true for some of the axioms I have in mind, which may both have nested class expressions and axiom annotations. Even the most elegant RDF-JSON mapping will result in some ugly and difficult to work with data structures.

I admit that if your axioms aren't much more than subclasses and owl:sameAs the case for a separate serialization is not very compelling.

> However, then you probably confuse people even more who are trying to get into Semantic Web, or?

I'm sympathetic to the view that adding another serialization to the mix risks confusing people. But a one-size-fits-all approach isn't optimal for everyone. So long as there are well defined mappings it's not so bad. Different people can use different tools for different tasks.

Having an OWL-centric JSON serialization could be viewed as an opportunity to bring in more developers to make full use of OWL ontologies, and from there bringing more people into the SW.

Cheers
Chris

> If we would have two separate serializations formats, then you have to teach people RDF/JSON and OWL/JSON, and convience them from their benefits and existence. The power of RDF Model is that it is a knowledge representation structure for the vocabulary level and the instantitation level. Otherwise, you would (prefer to) use OWL/JSON for vocabulary level serializations and RDF/JSON for instatiation level serializations. Finally, the size reduction would be a consequence of a more complex grammar, which might be a disadvantage.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> 
> Bob
>

Received on Wednesday, 6 April 2011 21:30:35 UTC