draft of OWL WG comments on SKOS Reference

Here is a revision of my personal comments, rewritten as from the OWL
WG.  I have added wording concerning the normative status of the SKOS
RDF/XML document.  I have also added something about an OWL 2 version of
the SKOS specification.

peter



Review of SKOS Reference last call document from the OWL WG
http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-skos-reference-20080829/

The OWL WG generally likes the SKOS Reference document.

However, it is the opinion of the WG that there should be more formality
in this reference document.   It would be best to have those parts of the SKOS
model that fit into RDF or OWL be prominently mentioned throughout the
reference document and, moreover, that the RDF/XML document that has the
OWL 1 portion of SKOS be mentioned at the beginning of the reference
document.  At this late stage, however, the OWL WG would be satisfied
with only the second half of this change.

The OWL WG notes that the reference document mentions an outdated
version of the RDF/XML document and expects that this will be fixed.

The OWL WG notes that the RDF/XML document is *not* normative with
respect to the SKOS vocabulary even if it is located at the "root" of
the SKOS vocabulary.  The OWL WG suggests that reference document
indicate that the RDF/XML document is a normative subset of the SKOS
specification.


The OWL WG notes that one portion of SKOS (Notations) uses custom
datatypes.  Although these seem to be benign, because RDF and OWL allow
extra datatypes, the use of these datatypes is not likely to be
supported by many tools.  The presence of extra datatypes may cause
difficulties in some tools, which may just reject SKOS documents that
have these datatypes.


The OWL WG believes that it would be very useful if there was a version
of SKOS that used OWL 2.  The WG understands that it is problematic for
a recommendation to point to something that is not (yet) a
recommendation and that further delay to SKOS is probably not warranted.
However, the OWL WG believes that pointing to an informative OWL 2
document would be useful.  The OWL WG will be shortly producing a
version of this document for the consideration of the SKOS WG.

The OWL WG notes that some parts of the SKOS specification and some
examples in the reference document do not fit within OWL 2 DL and that
thus may not be fully supported by Semantic Web tools.  The OWL WG
presents the following analysis of the SKOS specification and examples,
to indicate where representation capabilities beyond OWL 1 DL are used.
The OWL WG further notes that in many cases the SKOS specification fits
within OWL 2 DL, but that the examples do not.  The OWL WG suggests
removing those examples that do not fit within OWL 2 DL.

Section         Language        What bit / Suggestions to put into OWL 2 DL

skos:Concept    OWL 2 DL        individual/class/property punning (examples)

Concept Schemes OWL 2 DL        individual/ontology "punning" (example)

Lexical Labels  OWL 2 Full      subproperty of rdfs:label
                                  suggestion: don't use rdfs:label

		OWL 2 DL	property disjointness

                not OWL         axiom schema for unique prefLabel
                                  suggestion: include qualified
                                  cardinality restrictions only 
                                  for languages used (defined using
                                  datatype restrictions) 

                OWL 2 DL        individual / class punning (example)

                OWL 2 Full      objects as values of data property (example)
                                  suggestion: don't do this

Notations       extra datatypes	various extra datatypes
                                  suggestion: sort of in OWL 1 DL
 				  already, but unlikely to be supported
                                  by many tools

Documentation   OWL 2 Full      using literal in object property (examples)
                                  suggestion: don't do this

                OWL 2 Full      use of rdf:value (example)
                                  suggestion: don't use rdf:value

                OWL 2 DL        individual/class punning (example)

Semantic Rel's  OWL 2 DL        disjoint properties

Concept Coll'ns OWL 2 Full      ordering with typing
                                  suggestion: see below

Mapping Props   OWL 2 DL        disjoint properties

SKOS X          OWL 2 Full      data property chains
     		      		 suggestion: ??


Here is a way of handling typed ordering that should fit within OWL 2
DL.

Declaration( ObjectProperty(skos:firstMember) )
Declaration( ObjectProperty(skos:nextMembers) )
Declaration( ObjectProperty(skos:otherMembers) )
FunctionalProperty(skos:firstMember)
FunctionalProperty(skos:nextMembers)

PropertyDomain( skos:firstMember skos:OrderedCollection )
PropertyRange( skos:firstMember UnionOf(skos:Concept skos:ConceptScheme) ) ??

PropertyDomain( skos:nextMembers skos:OrderedCollection )
PropertyDomain( skos:nextMembers skos:OrderedCollection )
PropertyDomain( skos:otherMembers skos:OrderedCollection )
PropertyDomain( skos:otherMembers skos:OrderedCollection )

SubPropertyOf( skos:nextMembers skos:otherMembers )
SubPropertyOf( PropertyChain(skos:otherMembers skos:nextMembers) skos:otherMembers )

SubPropertyOf( skos:firstMember skos:member )
SubpropertyOf( PropertyChain(skos:otherMembers skos:firstMember) skos:member )

Received on Wednesday, 1 October 2008 18:44:17 UTC