Re: Dependency on XSD 1.1 -- possible compromise (supplementary)

this looks to me like a very feasible way forward. Cheers, Uli

On 16 Sep 2009, at 12:06, Ian Horrocks wrote:

> Sorry for yet another long email, but Sandro rightly pointed out  
> that a little more background information might be useful!
>
> As has been mentioned before, OWL's use of XSD 1.1 turned into a  
> problem when XSD fell behind schedule in August.  (The Schema  
> Working Group is currently aiming to end CR in January.) The basic  
> problem is that W3C Recommendations are not generally supposed to  
> normatively refer to works-in-progress or works with unclear IPR.  A  
> W3C Candidate Recommendation (like the current XSD 1.1) is a work-in- 
> progress with unclear IPR until it reaches Recommendation.   
> Exceptions have been made from time to time in the past, but people  
> report being unhappy with the results, and getting an except made is  
> looking to be quite difficult.  So we're in a bad situation, and  
> we're looking for the least bad way out.
>
> What we've come up with is to plan on publishing a slightly modified  
> OWL 2 as a Proposed Recommendation next week, and (assuming a  
> positive AC review) as a Recommendation in about 6 weeks.  Then, in  
> some months, whenever XSD 1.1 gets to Recommendation, publishing a  
> "Second Edition" of OWL 2.  Editions are a fairly light-weight way  
> to make minor changes and bug fixes to Recommendations.  To do this,  
> we'll need to keep the OWL Working Group around, essentially  
> dormant, collecting any errata and waiting for XSD 1.1.
>
> The "slight modification" is to normatively refer to XSD 1.0,  
> instead of XSD 1.1, and make all the OWL 2 features that depend on  
> XSD 1.1 be optional.  The text would make clear that we intend to  
> issue the edition described above, and that the XSD Candidate  
> Recommendation can be used as an indication of what that Second  
> Edition will be using. The precise text is more or less as per my  
> previous email (a small refinement to the reference wording was made  
> in the meantime), plus we added a note in Syntax where it says that  
> "Most datatypes are taken from the set of XML Schema Datatypes,  
> version 1.1" pointing to the text in Conformance that explains the  
> current situation, and we changed a comment in the OWL 2 XML  
> Serialization to refer to "XML Schema" rather than "XML Schema 1.1".
>
> I already made the changes to the documents so that you can see more  
> clearly what the result would be. The relevant changes are to the  
> XSD 1.1 reference [1], the note in SS&FS [2], the explanatory  
> section in Conformance [3], and the small change in the XML  
> Serialization [4].
>
> Regards,
> Ian
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/References/ref-xml-schema- 
> datatypes
> [2] http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/index.php?title=Syntax&diff=25666&oldid=25642
> [3] http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/index.php?title=Conformance&action=history
> [4] http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/index.php?title=OWL_XML_Schema&diff=25667&oldid=25193
>

Received on Wednesday, 16 September 2009 13:11:28 UTC