Re: Thought on AS/PS/XS triangle question

+1

Dave Reynolds wrote:
>
> So we had a majority in favour of having the whole triangle.
>
> But we have problems agreeing on how to write down that AS and the 
> associated mappings. ASN seemed to a reasonable job to me but people 
> had problems with it and it is clearly not yet working as a single 
> point of maintenance. The aebnf form is rather verbose and baroque and 
> makes the spec hard to read.
>
> A suggestion ... based partly on the way OWL 1.1 folks have gone about 
> things ...
>
> o Introduce the structure of the language using UML diagrams, OWL 1.1 
> call this a "structural model". We include in those diagrams the 
> ordering annotations. I would be happy to adopt the <<set>> and 
> <<list>> stereotypes that OWL 1.1 use.
>
> o We then provide a presentation syntax that is minimalist, least 
> punctuation, clearly close to the structural model. What Michael 
> described as 2/3 of the way from the current human readable syntax to 
> the aebnf. Let me call it MPS (minimalist presentation syntax) for now.
>
> o We express the semantics in terms of MPS.
>
> o We provide an injective (and thus invertible on the covered set) 
> mapping from MPS to XML data. We express this as a simple table of 
> structural mappings.
>
> o We also provide an XML Schema such that any XML data generated by 
> the mapping will conform to the schema.
>
> o We put in the document that it is our desire to be able to use the 
> structural model as a single point of maintenance in the future and 
> provide a textual notation for it and mappings between that and both 
> MPS and XML. However, doing so in an agreed way is work for the future.
>
> o We get a early sketch of PRD together in a similar style. We use 
> that as a concrete example to understand the issues of extensibility, 
> single point of maintenance at all that. However, we do that well 
> after the next BLD working draft.
>
> This seems to me to keep the spec relatively simple, just one mapping 
> to explain. The UML structural model aids understanding and gives a 
> good guide to implementers.
>
> I don't want to reopen a mega discussion on this nor do I want to push 
> for a compromise that people will later regret. If this approach 
> resonates with people great, if not then consider it withdrawn.
>
> Dave

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Received on Friday, 28 September 2007 19:05:25 UTC