RE: Primer

Bijan,

 > That section has some comments that apply even more strongly to your 
 > comment, "it would be better to start with the OWL 1 documents and 
 > merge them to reduce redundancy, update for new features, and make 
 > corrections and clarifications,". This is a huge amount of work; 

So is making completely new documents.

 > As your most used prior document was the Reference, I suggest you
 > examine the experimental restructuring of the syntax spec:

 > http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/Experiments_with_documents#De
 > scription.2FReference

I agree with Jim's assessement of this at:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-owl-wg/2007Dec/0111.html.

 > I'm not sure about centering on expressiveness as a concept, esp. if
 > we get into relative comparisons of expressiveness.  For example, I
 > don't like how the current draft talks about OWL as being "more
 > flexible" than relational schemas. I think setting this up
 > oppositionally like that, esp. when we are dealing with interest
 > relative and context sensitive values (yes, the relational calculus
 > can't express disjunction in the data, but OWL can't express
 > integrity constraints, and most databases include turing complete
 > langauges). Instead, I prefer to focus on differences and affordances
 > and complimentary benefits. It's much better, I think, to send
 > someone away from the primer *understanding* what OWL can and can not
 > do well, even if that means they recognize that OWL's not for them,
 > then to make them feel put upon for their choice of technology.

Bear in mind this document is for users, rather than language
developers, so the reader will be informed rather than offended by
direct comparisons.  For the user, expressiveness is a critical issue in
their choice of language.  In any case, none of the languages in the
overview will be a clear winner, since none completely subsume the
others.

Conrad

Received on Sunday, 27 January 2008 01:05:48 UTC