comments on OWL Overview (20 March working draft)

greetings -

general comment

It would be helpful to have more discussion of datatypes.


2. Language Synopsis

This section is rather confusing in that the term "Class" is already present in
RDFS, so it's hard to see how it is "introduced by OWL".  If the intent of this
paragraph is that the meaning of owl:Class is different from that of rdfs:Class,
then their relationship should be explicitly described here.


2.1 OWL Lite Synopsis

It is unclear how "Individual" relates to RDF Schema Features.


3.1 OWL Lite RDF Schema Features - rdfs:range

"The range of a property limits the individuals that the property may have as
its value" .  This implies that only individuals may be the values of
properties.  Nearly all the examples in this document use individual-valued
properties; datatypes and data-valued properties are hardly mentioned.  Having
some data-valued property examples would help reinforce the notion that OWL
makes certain distinctions about types of properties.  Or some wording to make
this clearer (e.g., from S&AS: "A range for a property specifies which
individuals or data values can be objects of statements....").  


3.4 OWL Lite Property Type Restriction  - allValuesFrom

The lack of mention or example of data-valued properties implies allValuesFrom
only applies to individual-valued properties.  Some words about values from
either a class description or a data range would be helpful.


3.5 OWL Lite Restricted Cardinality

I'm confused by "OWL (and OWL Lite)...."; I was under the impression that when
the term "OWL" was used, as opposed to one or more of the individual species
names, that it referred collectively to all three sublanguages.


editorial:


general comment

throughout the document the use of italics for OWL terms is inconsistent (e.g.,
compare 3.4 - allValuesFrom with 3.4 - someValuesFrom).


3.3 OWL Lite Property Characteristics
4. Incremental Language Description of OWL DL and OWL FULL
5. Summary

"OWL Abstract Syntax and Semantics" => "OWL Semantics and Abstract
Syntax"


3.1 OWL Lite RDF Schema Features - Class
"hierarchy using SubClassOf"  => "hierarchy using subClassOf"

3.1 OWL Lite RDF Schema Features - rdfs:Property
"thus a Datatype property"  => "thus a DatatypeProperty" ?


4. Incremental Language Description - complex classes
"OWL full"  =>  "OWL Full"


amy

Received on Monday, 24 March 2003 09:03:10 UTC