Re: ANN: SPARQL-DL query engine for the OWL API

On 10 Mar 2011, at 15:58, Thorsten Liebig wrote:
[snip]
> The incomplete feature overlap between SPARQL and SPARQL-DL might indeed cause misconceptions on user side. We therefore intend to follow Holger's request and suggest SPOQL (Simple Protocol and OWL Query Language) as new name

I think that's a bad idea, myself. The confusion engendered is much worse. 

The complaint, as I understood it, was not about features, but about syntax. You allow for alternative syntaxes for BGPs (to wit, a Manchester syntax variant). Since these have a correspondence to OWL DL friendly BGPs, there's an obvious connection to SPARQL with an OWL Entailment regime.

The languages are close notational variants.

Such queries obviously do not conform to any current spec at the W3C, but there's TONs of extensions to SPARQL in the wild: Offering a more convenient surface syntax for some cases seems perfectly in the spirit of such.

> -- that disassociate it from SPARQL but does not claim to stand for an universal conjunctive query language for OWL.

If you want to clarify, just say:
	SPARQL with Manchester Syntax over OWL entailment

I'm not sure what names the WG is going to give to various combinations. I favor something like SPARQL/Entailment regime, so SPARQL/OWL. If we add variant syntax, how about SPARQL/OWL-MS (and SPARQL/OWL-FS). Or we could use the 3 letter extensions , e.g., SPARQL/OMN or SPARQL-OMN.

> We will keep the reference to the SPARQL-DL proposal of course. @Bijan: Does this sound ok for you as one of the authors of the original work?

Nope, for all the reasons stated above. SPARQL-DL is a perfectly sensible name for a family of syntaxes plus a semantics.

You, of course, are free to name your hard work as you please. But I think that things are more confusing by coining new names that overemphsize the differences rather than related names that suggest the commonalities.

(Indeed, there seems to be confusion as to why there's confusion! You seem to think it's because it's not feature comparable. Holger's prior email suggests it's because of syntax.)


Cheers,
Bijan.

Received on Thursday, 10 March 2011 16:20:23 UTC