Re: ISSUE-78 (OWL LitEL++): OWL-Lite as EL++

I would support Carsten's suggestion of making EL++ and OWL Lite  
merge - however, I will also point out that the version of OWL full  
with this vocabulary is also heavily used (and while more expressive  
than the RDFS 3.0 proposal, is one I might consider in that vein) --  
we could then end up with an OWL Lite/OWL F-lite as was proposed in  
the original working group, but too close to the end (was in  
responding to comments on PR) to be enacted -- Guus Schreiber and I  
were both proponents of such a thing
  In fact, a rebranding of OWL Lite (whether exactly meeting EL++ or  
close) strikes me as something within our charter, and a major  
positive we could make for the OWL community
  -JH



On Nov 28, 2007, at 12:18 PM, OWL Working Group Issue Tracker wrote:

>
>
> ISSUE-78 (OWL LitEL++): OWL-Lite as EL++
>
> http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/tracker/issues/
>
> Raised by: Bijan Parsia
> On product:
>
> (On behalf of Carsten Lutz.)
>
> In my opinion, the fragment EL++ sticks out from the other ones for
> an important reason: it is (truely tractable and) used for a lot of
> practically very relevant ontologies. Examples:
>
> - SNOMED, a commercial medical ontology underlying the standardization
>   of medical terminology in the health systems of US, UK, etc.
>
> - NCI, the national cancer institutes medical ontology
>
> - Gene Ontology
>
> In OWL 1.0, there was an "OWL Light" version of OWL. The idea was to
> provide a lightweight version of OWL for which reasoning is simpler,
> but then it was ill-designed (reasoning actually wasn't simpler), and
> deprecated in OWL 1.1.
>
> I would like to advocate having a new OWL Light, which is EL++. My
> main reason for proposing this is that having an official name with
> "OWL" in it is likely to increase the visibility of this fragment *a
> lot*. This is good for two reasons:
>
> 1. We open up the OWL world for ontology developers that want to work
>    with a tractable languages. There are quite some developers who
>    insist on tractability (to name only one example, the SNOMED  
> people).
>
> 2. Just by choosing the proper name, we can make stronger claims about
>    the relationship between OWL and a number of important ontologies.
>    For example, when we choose EL++ as OWL Light, we can then claim
>    that SNOMED is written in OWL Light, which may again draw attention
>    to OWL Light and OWL in general.
>
> In summary, I feel that we have a real chance here to truely extend
> the scope and visibility of OWL, simply by choosing a name. Note that
> in contrast "being one of the 27 tractable fragments of OWL" sounds
> much less convincing. Or in yet other words: the current "tractable
> fragments" document does not standardize anything, it rather has an
> informative character. To standardize something, you cannot list all
> options, but you have to make a *decision*. This is what I advocate.
>
> Note that I do not insist on the name "OWL Light". Other options
> such as "OWL Poly" may be fine as well, but it should have OWL in
> it, and there shouldn't be 5 other fragments that also have OWL
> names (for otherwise the effect described above vanishes again).
>
> Disclaimer: With EL++, I am advocating my own work here. I believe
> that my arguments are objective, but still you should know this.
>
>
>

"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would  
it?." - Albert Einstein

Prof James Hendler				http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~hendler
Tetherless World Constellation Chair
Computer Science Dept
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY 12180