ISSUE-15 (ontology names): REPORTED: Ontologies should not be required to include a URI

ISSUE-15 (ontology names): REPORTED: Ontologies should not be required to include a URI

http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/tracker/issues/

Raised by: Peter Patel-Schneider
On product: 

Reported by jlc415, Jun 11, 2007

The current specification *requires* that each ontology include a URI.

The ability to specify an ontology URI (along the lines of setting a "base" in xml or html files) can be 
useful, but is completely inappropriate in many settings: the identifier for an ontology which does 
not declare a URI should be inferred from other information (such as its location).

Duplicating an ontology with a URI requires editing the file itself, which disallows use of OWL files 
with most systems providing automatic maintenance of different versions of the same file. For 
example, it would be valuable to be able to check OWL into a CVS, subversion, or GIT repository and 
then link to either the head of a particular branch or to a specific version, where these different 
versions are served on the web from URIs automatically assigned by the version control system. If 
the ontology includes a URI this is not possible.

As a fix, I propose making the URI of an ontology optional.

Received on Wednesday, 24 October 2007 21:11:13 UTC