[schema] Re: Web Ontology Working Group Consensus Review of RDF Core documents

At 05:17 PM 2/20/03 -0500, Jim Hendler wrote:
>-------------------------------------------
>WOWG comments on the RDF Schema Document
>--------------------------------------------
>We believe that the design of the language, as reflected in the LC 
>documents, is such that OWL can appropriately use RDF Schema and endorse 
>this design.
>
>Raphael Volz of our group has prepared a detailed review of this document 
>which he will send to the RDF Core WG.  The Web Ontology Working Group 
>agrees with the spirit of his review (except for the comments on section 
>4, which was only supported by part of the WG). We summarize our main 
>comments below:
>
>i. Although this document is called RDF Schema we think that the title 
>"RDF Vocabulary Description Language" would be clearer, and make the 
>difference from XML Schema (used for validation) more evident.

I would support such a change (indeed, I thought this was our intent?).

>ii. Although we did not reach consensus on this, several members felt that 
>it was unacceptable that two graphs that differ only in their rdfs:comment 
>content would not entail each other.

Aha!  The rdfs:comment rubber hits the road!   To my view, having G1 entail 
G2, where G1 and G2 vary only in the [content of] rdfs:comment statements 
would be a significant shift in my understanding of the intent of 
rdfs:comment.  But I also think that rdf:comment may be unfortunately 
named, since I could imagine a view of rdfs:comment that is, by fiat, true 
in all interpretations.

As specified, rdfs:comment might be understood as "informal definition" 
rather than "something that might be said about".  But the name suggests 
the latter.

ALthough this impacts the definition of RDF, it does not do so in a way 
that changes any existing software, so this might be a good time to 
contemplate renaming rdfs:comment to (say) rdfs:intent, and changing the 
semantics so that:
   x rdfs:comment "some text"
is true in all RDFS-interpetations.

#g



-------------------
Graham Klyne
<GK@NineByNine.org>

Received on Friday, 21 February 2003 13:06:32 UTC