SKOS and Rules

The SKOS Core Guide includes reference to rules:

http://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-skos-core-guide/#secaboutrules

[[
Inference rules are part of SKOS Core. Inference rules are
described in prose, and where appropriate are expressed using the Jena
2 rule syntax [Jena Inference], or as RDF statements using the OWL
vocabulary [OWL]. Inference rules appear in boxes such as:

An example rule.

(?x ex:p ?y)
->
(?x ex:q ?y)

prefix ex: <http://www.example.com/eg#>

]]

I can see what's going on here, but it makes me a little
uncomfortable. If the SKOS recommendation is to make use of additional
infrastructure, shouldn't this be couched in terms of a standards
(e.g. RIF when it appears) rather than referring to some particular
implementation (Jena rules)?

Is there going to be some notion of comformance? For example, does
this mean that I *cannot* provide a SKOS implementation without having
some RDF repository that implements the rules -- and in that vein,
what are the precise intended semantics of these rules?

	Sean

--
Sean Bechhofer
School of Computer Science
University of Manchester
sean.bechhofer@manchester.ac.uk
http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/people/bechhofer

Received on Monday, 27 November 2006 18:18:52 UTC