Re: SWBPD note on QCRs

From: Guus Schreiber <schreiber@cs.vu.nl>
Subject: SWBPD note on QCRs
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 14:51:39 +0200

> Peter, Ian,
> 
> In the SW Best Practices group Alan Rector and I have been working on a 
> note on QCRs, with the intention of providing guidance for ontology 
> engineers. The note is mainly based on the work-arounds and proposals we 
> developed during the WebOnt discussions about this. The current draft 
> [1] has been lying around for a year or so (there were some formatting 
> updates, but nothing major) and we would like to finish this now.
> 
> Patterns 1 & 2 in [1] are work-arounds for OWL as it is. I want to draw 
> your attention to pattern 3, a "non-endorsed OWL extension", which 
> actually comes from the WebOnt resolution on QCRs [2, end of the email].
> 
> I was looking at OWL 1.1 documents [3, 4] to see what kind of syntax you 
> propose. I found the abstract syntax, but no mapping to RDF/XML triples. 
> I have two questions:



> - Is there a proposal for a OWL 1.1 RDF/XML representation of QCRs?

There is a proposal for an XML dialect for OWL 1.1 forthcoming, based on
work by the DIG working group
(http://homepages.cs.manchester.ac.uk/~seanb/dig/).   See the DIG XML
Schema http://homepages.cs.manchester.ac.uk/~seanb/dig/schema.xsd

There is no current proposal for an RDF/XML encoding of OWL 1.1.  To just
have an RDF/XML syntax for OWL 1.1 is not hard, but this alone does not
make a same-syntax extension of RDF(S).  To do a same-syntax extension
"right" requires a considerable amount of work, if it is even possible.

> - What do you think of the proposed RDF/XML syntax in pattern 3 of [1]? 
> Comments and/or proposals for alternatives would be very much
> appreciated.

This syntax would have a non-monotonic meaning considered as a same-syntax
extension of RDF(S), which makes it problematic.  A monotonic reading
requires different tags, at least for owl:cardinality and
owl:maxCardinality.

> Thanks.
> 
> Best,
> Guus
> 
> [1] http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/QCR/
> [2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-webont-wg/2003May/0072.html
> [3] http://www-db.research.bell-labs.com/user/pfps/owl/overview.html
> [4] http://www-db.research.bell-labs.com/user/pfps/owl/syntax.html

Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research

Received on Tuesday, 25 April 2006 17:11:25 UTC