example of asn07 as OWL subset, musings on RDF/XML

Perhaps it sheds a little light on the RDF/XML syntax debate to show the
OWL version of the asn07.  The idea here is that we're modeling an
idealized rule system, or, equivalently, we're modeling the information
transmitted in RIF.

This OWL-DL ontology was generated from a random strawman abstract
grammar for BLD.   (I took the asn from BLD some time ago and modified
it in random ways, playing around.)

The asn07:
   http://www.w3.org/2007/08/rif-absyn/foo.asn
The equivalent OWL:
   http://www.w3.org/2007/08/rif-absyn/foo.owl

Now, it's not quite equivalent.  In particular, the OWL version does not
constrain the syntax of lists, because you're not allowed to talk about
RDF lists in OWL-DL.   I'm not sure whether to address this with using
non-RDF lists, use OWL-Full for this part, or use some other formalism
(eg BLD :-).

I've looked at this ontology in Protege4 and Pellet and it seems to say
the right things.   I can think of tests I haven't done.

The point here is that a RIF document / ruleset can be nicely talked
about using objects (or, essentially, using relational data or RDF).  

So, I think it's clear that a RIF document *can* be transmitted in
RDF/XML.  The data model of the syntax is compatible with the RDF data
model (which isn't surprising, since at this level of details it's a
generic object model).  And if we make a non-RDF/XML syntax, we can
define a GRDDL transform to RDF/XML, so the semantic issues the same.
The question is just whether the *primary* *normative* syntax is a
subset of RDF/XML or is some other essentially-equivalent XML syntax.

>From my perspective, it seems easier to just talk about transforms on
the semantic-level data -- that is, the object model -- not on the XML
form.

     -- Sandro

Received on Tuesday, 18 September 2007 18:43:44 UTC