Re: A possible way of going forward with OWL-R unification (ISSUE-131)

On 19 Jul 2008, at 10:12, Ivan Herman wrote:

> Ian,
>
> I hope it is all right if I do not go to the usual inline reply  
> style in this case. The main reason is that, I think, we are in  
> agreement for the essential problems, and what is then important is  
> to have the essential points pinned down for further reference. How  
> we got there has only a historical interest...

I agree -- I have truncated this email to save on bandwidth :-)

>
> Thanks again for having stated the conformance question clearly. It  
> is indeed at the heart of the issue.
>
> 1. The conformance issue. Actually, I think that the issue as we  
> discussed is slightly more than Issue-130[1]. Indeed [1] only asks  
> 'how to handle conformance and nonconformance', whereas I think our  
> question is '_what_ is conformance?'. (Having thought of it a bit  
> more, I do not have, personally, any objection to the formulation  
> you propose.)

Fair enough. We can easily extend the scope of the issue to cover  
this, e.g., by extending the description to say something like:

"We haven't really talked about how to handle conformance and  
nonconformance, e.g., *how conformance is defined*, what conformance  
labels we provide ..."


>
> Actually, as an aside concerning our core discussion, I could see  
> an additional editorial issue, too. Indeed, while the old  
> consistency checker clause[2] does go in this direction, I have not  
> found any explicit conformance clause in the old OWL documents (I  
> may have missed it, in which case my apologies...). It may be worth  
> considering an explicit conformance clause in, say, the Profile  
> document (maybe also somewhere else where DL vs Full are discussed)  
> describing, in essence, the core of this discussion. It may help  
> some other hotheaded readers like me:-). Not all W3C recs have  
> something like that, but some do (eg, though in a different area,  
> ITS has something like that[3], so does WSDL[4] or RDFa[5]), and I  
> think it would improve the quality of the documents.

I agree -- the statements about conformance are in a rather strange  
place in the OWL 1 documents, and as a result are easily missed.


>
> 2. I guess the editorial structure in the profile doc will be  
> something like
>
> - OWL R
>   (general descr)
>   - precise spec in terms of grammar, more or less like the current  
> OWL-R-DL
>   - "Reasoning in OWL-R and RDF Graphs using Rules" as you put it  
> below
>
> and that could then work indeed. There will be some question on the  
> details coming up, but let us cross the bridge when we get there.

Sounds reasonable.


>
> Two (minor) procedural questions/issues:
>
> - Would it be important to raise a separate issue on what  
> conformance means, just to leave a better paper trail than this  
> long discussion? As I said, I feel that this is more than  
> Issue-130... On the other hand, it might be unnecessary  
> administration...

I think it would make more sense to extend Issue-130 along the lines  
I mentioned above -- it wouldn't make much sense to discuss  
conformance labelling etc. without first defining what conformance  
means.


>
> - If the issue on conformance is decided in direction of what you  
> propose and then Boris' proposal is accepted, I guess that makes  
> Issue-116[6] moot, ie, CLOSED. One open issue less;-)

I'm all for closing issues :-)

Thanks for the useful discussion, and enjoy your vacation.

Ian



>
> Thanks again
>
> Have a nice week-end
>
> Ivan
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/tracker/issues/130
> [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-test/#consistencyChecker
> [3] http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/REC-its-20070403/#conformance
> [4] http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/REC-wsdl20-20070626/#markup
> [5] http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-syntax/#s_conformance
> [6] http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/tracker/issues/116
>

[snip]

Received on Saturday, 19 July 2008 12:11:52 UTC