Re: ACTION-264: Discuss imports with Tim Redmond.

On 18 Feb 2009, at 19:30, Timothy Redmond wrote:

> I wanted to be sure that I understood where things stand with this
> issue.  It seems to me that XML Catalogs can be used to satisfy the  
> use
> cases that I have. (I have another use case where XML Catalogs would
> also seem to work).  But this only works if a critical mass of the  
> tools
> adopt or at least support this mechanism.

Yes. But XML Catalogs are a standard and widely (AFAICT) technique in  
the wider world. We should avoid reinventing the wheel!

This raises a community problem, of course, but I think that's best  
left to the community. If we put it, for example, into the OWL API,  
that will do a whole hell of a lot to raise awareness and to actually  
disseminate the solution.

> For example, I know a group that has users who check ontologies out  
> from
> svn and edit them.  This group of users all favor different tool sets
> and I think that one of their challenges is getting these tools to  
> work
> nicely together.  Putting an XML catalog in svn will only help if
> TopBraid, OntoEdit, Protege 4, etc all can read this format.

Sure.

>   Having
> different repository formats for different tools is the status quo and
> is awkward.

Right, but AFAIK, there's no competing standard. So people should  
simply bug their implementors. Or write translators to and from XML  
Catalogs to the various private formats (e.g., Jena has one; once   
you have a wrapper/translator for jena and the owl api you are, for  
many purposes, done).

[snip]
> So my question is, do the other members of the working group feel that
> XML Catalogs are an acceptable compromise or solution?

Good question.

>   If so is there
> some way that the owl working group can encourage tool builders to use
> XML Catalogs?  Or would we recommend low level mechanisms that  
> redirect
> the URL based IO independently of the tool set?

If you check the minutes for the..er...second f2f (in DC) you'll see  
that a bespoke mechanism was proposed there and rejected (with some  
mention of XML Catalogs there, as well).

I don't think there is much the working group can do at this point.  
There is a standard (XML Catalogs). Individually, we can recommend  
it. With a good strong push from people like yourself I think it  
could get uptake with OWL 2. But as its not part of the language,  
there's not much for us to do.

Cheers,
Bijan.

Received on Wednesday, 18 February 2009 19:53:50 UTC