Re: Some comments on OWL Reference

Dear Prof. Qu

You said:
[[
It seems to me that:
1) There is no PRECISE SYNTAX  of OWL. 
2) The XML encoding of an OWL ontology is based on RDF/XML Syntax as well as 
RDF schema for OWL (Appendix B).
3) Without the PRECISE SYNTAX of OWL, where does the *Final and Formally* 
stated normative definition of the language come from?
]]

Conformance statements concerning which documents are in OWL Full, OWL DL, and 
OWL Lite can be found in the OWL Test Cases WD (not yet at last call).

http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-test/#syntaxConformance
[[
An OWL Full document is any RDF/XML document [RDF/XML Syntax]. 

An OWL DL document is an OWL Full document such that the imports closure [OWL 
Semantics and Abstract Syntax] of the corresponding RDF graph [RDF Concepts] 
is an OWL DL ontology in RDF graph form. 

An OWL Lite document is an OWL Full document such that the imports closure 
[OWL Semantics and Abstract Syntax] of the corresponding RDF graph [RDF 
Concepts] is an OWL Lite ontology in RDF graph form. 
]]

These statements defer to the RDF documents and to section 4.2 of S&AS, as 
well as the concept of imports closure defined in section 5.3

http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-owl-semantics-20030331/mapping.html#4.2
http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-owl-semantics-20030331/mapping.html#OWL_DL_RDF_graphs
http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-owl-semantics-20030331/rdfs.html#RDF_graph_imports_closure

When discussing your comment the WG also discussed the treatment of 
owl:foobar, which is specified, again in the conformance section of the Test 
WD:

http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-test/#syntaxChecker
[[
In addition, an OWL Syntax Checker SHOULD give a warning if the RDF graph [RDF 
Concepts] corresponding to the document uses any URI references starting with 
the prefix http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl# except those found in the [RDF 
Schema for OWL]. 
]]

Please can you reply to this message on the public-webont-comments@w3.org 
list, indicating whether we should be giving further consideration to your 
comment
1. The PRECISE SYNTAX  of OWL
from msg
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webont-comments/2003Apr/0024.html
or whether these pointers have adequately clarified the situation.

Thanks for your comments; there is still plenty of time for more!

Jeremy Carroll

Received on Thursday, 24 April 2003 14:53:30 UTC