comments on RIF-RDF-OWL

Hi

I have drafted some comments at:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2008May/0008

I'll discuss some of these with the OWL WG, and with HP colleagues, 
before formally sending them to this list.

Here are a few that don't need further discussion:


This is a draft review of
http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-rif-rdf-owl-20080415/

I hope that a few of these comments will be endorsed by the OWL
WG, who asked me to review. The others I will make as personal
comments, (or perhaps as HP comments).


1) Overall:

This reads as a mature and complete document, and it is
plausible to have last call soon.
It's main failing, if one can call it that is that
at times it is a little too detailed, and gives too much
attention to uninteresting details.

2) Scope of review

I reviewed the document excluding the Appendices.

I have not read the other RIF documents, so am not competent
to review the interaction between this document and RIF.

I am not competent to review a few of the technical sections
to do with DL: specifically 3.1.1 and 3.2.2.1, (and more generally
3.2.2) were overly challenging for me, and this should not be
seen as a criticism of those sections.

==

Specific comments follow - I distinguish three types of comments

editorial/bug/change/opinion/question

to aid in the processing of these comments.
The 'change' comments are where I would prefer the document
to be changed, but there may be arguments the other way.
The others are meant to be uncontroversial!

The 'opinion' comments are like 'change' but of lower force,
i.e. ignore me, I don't mind.


The comments are made in document order.

Section 1.
3) para1 editorial
Suggest change 'must be' to 'are'
It is possible to give whatever interpretation one wants,
'must' suggests some sort of conformance, but there is no
framework for conformance provided.

4) para5, editorial
I found this paragraph read badly.

Suggest rephrasing like:
[[
A specialization of this scenario is the publication of RIF rules that
refer to RDF graphs: publication is a special kind of interchange: one
to many, rather than one to one.  When a rule publisher A publishes its
rules on the Web, it is hoped that there are several consumers that
retrieve the RIF rules and RDF graphs from the Web, translate the RIF
rules to their own rules languages, and process them together with the
RDF graphs in their own rules engine. The use case Publishing Rules for
Interlinked Metadata (RIF-UCR) illustrates the publication scenario.
]]


8) end of para, under table 1, question

Does the sentence

[[
This means that whenever a triple s p o is satisfied, the corresponding
RIF frame formula s'[p' -> o'] is satisfied, and vice versa.
]]

adequately take account of CWA and OWA divergences between the
frameworks?

9) Discussion of ill-typed literals, change

I suggest deleting the bulk of this discussion including examples
from

[[
Typed literals in RDF
]]

down to

[[
the datatype xsd:integer.
]]

I think a simple statement like:

[[
RIF is not intended to interoperate with the rarely used facility
of RDF to permit ill-typed literals.
]]

would be better. This extended example gives much too much weight to
an RDF 'feature' that is there more for allowing legacy systems to
not implement datatyping than as a forward looking functionality.

10) 2.1.1 the word 'infinite', comment

Ah, you know RDF Concepts better than I do, I had to go and check that
this was correct! (I was amused)

11) 2.1.2 para1, change

I suggest delete of the sentence

[[
Furthermore, RDF allows expressing typed literals for which the literal
string is not in the lexical space of the datatype; such literals are
called ill-typed literals.
]]

it unnecessarily labours an uninteresting point.

12) 2.1.2 defn of conforming datatype map, change

I suggest not using the term 'symbol space', but try using more familiar
term, such as 'name from the RIF namespace'

14) 2.1.2 Last enumerated list, bug

There is an error here. Conditions 1 and 3 contradict one another.

15) 2.2.1 general comment, opinion

I am not sure that covering simple entailment is worth it.
I am not convinced that it isn't either.

The problem for me is the added point of confusion of (IR union IP)
versus IR elsewhere. Looking at this text makes me think that RDF Core
should have required IP subset IR, also for simple interpretations. As
is the extra text required for this point is a cognitive load on the
reader, and the RIF WG needs to be sure that the additional cognitive
load is worth the benefit of supporting simple entailment. It probably
is, but then again ...

18) 3, editors note, opinion

I would put this either in the acknowledgements or as a note in the
document at this point.
I am strongly in favour of appropriate citations.



Jeremy

Received on Tuesday, 6 May 2008 17:46:17 UTC