Re: Comments on structural specification

Hi Peter,

Your point is well taken -- we've been working through the syntax to see 
what the implications are for our own tools, and expect to have a better 
idea later this week.  There is clearly information encoded in the 
diagrams that is not present in the written syntax, but we're still 
trying to understand the impact.   I hope to provide more feedback once 
we've completed the analysis.

Thanks,

Elisa

Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:

>I take it from your message that you are concerned about the UML
>diagrams portions of the "Structural Specification and Functional-Style
>Syntax" document.  What about the other parts of the document?
>
>peter
>
>
>From: "Elisa F. Kendall" <ekendall@sandsoft.com>
>Subject: Re: Comments on structural specification (was Re: document pubication schedule)
>Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:55:12 -0700
>
>  
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>>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 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 from implementors in 
>>particular, and are willing to assist with that work, as I mentioned in 
>>a previous email. The end result will likely necessitate a revision to 
>>the ODM, which should be maintained in sync with the OWL language 
>>development process. We think that the OMG should remain the primary 
>>home for some of this work, but, just as we did with the recently 
>>published ISO Common Logic specification [2], we would be happy to have 
>>the diagrams live in both places.
>>
>>Some of the areas of disconnect between the current ODM and proposed 
>>structural specification include a well-defined relationship with RDF, 
>>which Jeremy Carroll, Dave Reynolds, Pat Hayes, Chris Welty, Evan 
>>Wallace, and others contributed to the specification.  We also 
>>maintained support for OWL Full, which is important for some members of 
>>our user base.  There are a number of implementations of the ODM already 
>>available, including our Visual Ontology Modeler [3], IBM's Web Ontology 
>>Manager and Integrated Ontology Development Toolkit [4] (among other IBM 
>>projects), and several open source activities [5, 6, 7].  Thus, the 
>>document should be reviewed not only by us (Sandpiper), but by other 
>>stakeholders in the OMG community.
>>
>>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 are 
>>interested in participating the work) are ready to be published with 
>>working draft status.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>Elisa
>>
>>[1] http://www.omg.org/docs/ptc/06-10-11.pdf
>>[2] 
>>http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=39175
>>[3] http://www.sandsoft.com/products.html
>>[4] http://alphaworks.ibm.com/topics/semantics?open&S_TACT=105AGX01&S_CMP=LP
>>[5] http://www.eclipse.org/m2m/atl/usecases/ODMImplementation/
>>[6] 
>>http://www.eclipse.org/modeling/mdt/eodm/docs/articles/EODM_Documentation/
>>[7] http://cimtool.org/
>>    
>>
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