Re: Minutes 11-16-06 HCLS teleconference (small correction)

I would add - as Holger Knublauch and Jim Hendler both pointed out,  
reading through some of the threads on that list can help to  
alleviate the misgivings one might have regarding whether there has  
been sufficient detailed debate surrounding this issue that has taken  
the needs of all OWL users into consideration.  I should have gone  
there first, before mentioning it directly in the TCon.

As I mentioned in my reply to Jim Hendler, I think I was just taken  
aback by the convincing, collective weight of the arguments presented  
by the several papers given by various U. Manchester groups at the  
OWL ED 2006 meeting last week against FULL RDF compatibility for some  
of the OWL 1.1 (and SHOIQ DL) requirements.

The thought ProtegeOWL v4 - which sounds like a major step ahead from  
what Joanne Luciano has said and what they describe in the paper on  
OWL 1.1 support in ProtegeOWL & FaCT++ given at the meeting - will  
quickly become a tool of choice for those developing OWL ontologies -  
is a bit worrisome too, as it does not use RDF serialization.  Having  
said that, after reading some more on the lists, it sounds more  
likely ProtegeOWL v4 will not use RDF as its DEFAULT serialization  
for very compelling reasons presented in that paper; however, there  
will likely be an "RDF export" capability, using the RDF mapping that  
several folks are working on.  Whether it will be the typical RDF/XML  
you get now from ProtegeOWL v3.2 or some other RDF serialization  
scheme, is likely still open to debate.  The open source arena in  
which Protege and ProtegeOWL dwells will likely bring forth whatever  
functionality the community decides they require, so long as the  
underlying mathematical formalism can support it.

I would also add my sense is the OWL 1.1 developers have collectively  
worked very diligently to accrue feedback from the community (general  
experience with OWL in many scenarios and related requests for new  
features) and to discuss these pending changes since many were first  
announced at last year's OWL ED 2005.  What they presented at the OWL  
ED 2006 meeting last week appears to be the summary outcome of that  
effort.

As Ivan and others have made clear in the last few months, despite  
much informal discussion that has already transpired, OWL 1.1 has not  
yet been officially discussed by the relevant W3C working groups, so  
the debate is likely to continue for a while.

At least that's that's the view I get as an interested user/ 
bystander.  ;-)

Cheers,
Bill

On Nov 17, 2006, at 8:04 AM, Ivan Herman wrote:

>> will be ample possibility to have discussions on the charter.  
>> Please not
>> the public-owl-dev@w3.org is where, most probably, these discussions
>> will take place. YOUR VOICE SHOULD BE HEARD THERE.

Bill Bug
Senior Research Analyst/Ontological Engineer

Laboratory for Bioimaging  & Anatomical Informatics
www.neuroterrain.org
Department of Neurobiology & Anatomy
Drexel University College of Medicine
2900 Queen Lane
Philadelphia, PA    19129
215 991 8430 (ph)
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215 843 9367 (fax)


Please Note: I now have a new email - William.Bug@DrexelMed.edu