Re: Comments on structural specification (was Re: document pubication schedule)

On Oct 23, 2007, at 3:55 AM, Elisa F. Kendall wrote:

> Hi Bijan and all,
>
> The Ontology Definition Metamodel (ODM) [1] was originally  
> developed to address some of the same issues that you, Boris, and  
> others have identified as the motivation

*a* motivation, and Boris and I differ slightly on some of the  
details of even that. Just to be clear.

> behind the structural specification for OWL 1.1, among others. We  
> agree that this is a really valuable part of the overall language  
> specification, but think that this particular document needs more  
> scrutiny prior to publication

Can we please separate out publication issue from discussion of  
failing of the document? This is actually a non-sequitur. At some  
point, we will publish WDs of documents which are very, very  
imperfect. That is the nature of the game.

> from implementors in particular,

I remind you that there already *has* been considerable scrutiny of  
these documents by implementators. There were papers at OWLED 2006  
and 2007 on implementation experience, e.g.,
	http://webont.org/owled/2007/PapersPDF/submission_32.pdf
	http://webont.org/owled/2006/acceptedLong/submission_15.pdf

There are multiple, independent implementations of both editors and  
reasoners.

To the degree that you and other participants are unaware of that  
work and feedback is the minimum degree to which I think it's helpful  
to publish WDs (I find it *far* effective to say, "Hey, please review  
the first public working drafts...the WG is starting it's review and  
we want as much feedback (good or bad) as possible.")

[snip]
> We are comfortable with publication of the model theoretic  
> semantics document, but do not believe that either the structural  
> specification or MOF-based metamodel on which it depends (whose  
> authors are members of the OMG Ontology PSIG, who agree that it is  
> merely a draft,

And the proposal is to publish *merely a draft*. They are not called  
"Working Drafts" for no reason.

> and are interested in participating the work) are ready to be  
> published with working draft status.

Well, no one's proposed publishing the MOF-based metamodel document yet.

Cheers,
Bijan.

Received on Tuesday, 23 October 2007 08:45:29 UTC