[Fwd: WebOnt General Requirements Subgroup - Initial E-mail]

Message forwarded for archival purposes....

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: WebOnt General Requirements Subgroup - Initial E-mail
Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2001 14:29:53 -0500
From: Jeff Heflin <heflin@cse.lehigh.edu>
Organization: Lehigh University
To: "McGuinness, Deborah" <dlm@ksl.stanford.edu>,ned.smith@intel.com,
jeremy_carroll@hp.com, phayes@ai.uwf.edu,connolly@w3.org,
jos.deroo.jd@belgium.agfa.com
CC: hendler@cs.umd.edu

Welcome to the subgroup on General Requirements (formerly called
technical issues or cross-cutting issues) for WebOnt. I have gotten your
names from today's telecon, but if you do not wish to participate,
please let me know and I'll remove you from the list.

Just to review, the purpose of this group is to prepare a document that
describes in detail the requirements for a web ontology language that
may result from multiple use cases. We are expected to have a draft of
this document ready in time for the telecon on Thursday, Dec. 13.

Jim's original list included the following requirements for us to
consider:
- versioning
- ontology-based search
- domain-mapping/ ontology linking
- ontology querying
- rapid creation of large ontologies
- inconsistency/contradiction (added as a result of mailing list
discussion)

Given this as a starting point, I'd like to solicit feedback on the
following issues:

1) Is the name "General Requirements" appropriate? Do we prefer
something else? Perhaps "Core Requirements?" Other suggestions?

2) How should we proceed? I recommend that Deborah and I merge our
initial requirements and then present these to the rest of the group as
a straw man. For those interested, my initial sketch of requirements for
a Web Ont language can be found at
http://www.cse.lehigh.edu/~heflin/webont/reqs.html

3) What format should the detailed requirements take? Guus Schreiber's
suggestion for Use Case format doesn't fit, since we are describing
requirements. I propose the following format:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
REQUIREMENT:
A short name for the requirement

SUPPORTED TASKS:
Which use cases (or classes of use cases) will benefit from this
requirement? 

JUSTIFICATION:
Why is the requirement important? What will it achieve?

POSSIBLE APPROACH:
How might our language design satisfy or support the requirement?
----------------------------------------------------------------------


Please respond to these issues as soon as possible, since we have a
pretty short turn-around time. I look forward to working closely with
all of you.

Jeff

Received on Friday, 7 December 2001 12:18:27 UTC