Re: QA Review of owl-semantics

Dear Karl and QA Working Group members,

This is a reply from the Web Ontology Working Group (WebOnt) to your
comments (a QA review) [1] on our Last Call version of "OWL Semantics
and Abstract Syntax" ("S&AS") [3].  Dan Connolly sent a partial reply
[2] only to Karl, which left several issues open.  This message
addresses all issues except checkpoint 13.2 on which the editors are
contacting you separately.

First, I need to apologize for us not properly reviewing and
commenting on your Last Call draft of the "QA Framework: Specification
Guidelines" [4] before your deadline.  Each point below, addressing
your comments on our spec is in a sense a comment on your spec.  We
hope that even at this late date you find our comments helpful.

1. We have decided to publish our specification in the form of several
   documents which are expected to have somewhat different audiences.
   You have reviewed only one of the six and so missed most of the
   (informative) background and explanatory material, as well as the
   (normative) test suite and conformance section.   S&AS [3], the
   document you reviewed, stated:

            This document is designed to be read by those interested
            in the technical details of OWL. It is not particularly
            intended for the casual reader, who should probably first
            read the OWL Guide [OWL Guide].

   However, your comments suggested to us that the overall picture of
   the OWL documents was not sufficiently obvious. The WG therefore
   decided to include in all OWL recommendation-track documents both
   (1) a statement that the document is one part of a set of
   documents, and (2) a prominent reference to the Document Roadmap in
   "OWL Overview" [5].

   We believe many checkpoints not met by S&AS alone are fully met by
   the OWL specification as a whole.  These include (in the order
   given by your review) 1.1, 2.2, 3.4, 3.5, 10.1, 13.1, 1.4, 3.1,
   13.4, 14.1, 14.2, and 2.3.  Most of these are addressed in OWL Test
   Cases [6].  The remaining checkpoints on which you noted
   non-conformance are discussed below.

2. Checkpoint 9.1 ("Indicate if the specification is extensible.").
   We believe the goals of this checkpoint [11] have been satisfied,
   although we offer no simple yes/no answer or claims for the related
   section 9 checkpoints. As you know, OWL is constructed using RDF
   and XML, so it inherits many of their extensibility features.  For
   instance, we demonstrate RDF extensibility by showing how OWL terms
   can be seen as an extension of RDFS terms [7], and we explain how
   XML Datatype extensibility affects OWL [8] [9].  At the same time,
   OWL Lite and DL have strict limits on what they contain, as
   detailed in the conformance limits [10].  Among these and related
   parts of our specification we believe we have guided the markets
   around OWL sufficiently well at this time.

3. Checkpoint 13.2 ("Distinguish normative and informative text").
   The Working Group feels that the style for making this distinction
   is a matter of editorial discretion, best done with an
   understanding of a particular document and its audience.  The
   editors of S&AS have agreed to discuss this directly with you.

I hope you find these explanations and comments useful.  I would be
happy to continue discussion of your specifications.  Meanwhile, Karl,
please let me know (with a cc: public-webont-comments@w3.org) whether
this reply is satisfactory in addressing your group concerns about our
specifications.

    -- Sandro Hawke, W3C (Semantic Web Advanced Development)
       writing on behalf of the Web Ontology Working Group


[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webont-comments/2003Apr/0064
and http://www.w3.org/QA/2003/04/QA-Rev-owl-semantics-all
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webont-comments/2003May/0002
[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-owl-semantics-20030331/
[4] http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-qaframe-spec-20030210/
[5] http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/#s1.1
[6] http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-test/
[7] http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref/#appB
[8] http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-semantics/direct.html#3.1
[9] http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-semantics/rdfs.html#5.2
[10] http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-test/#docConformance
[11] http://www.w3.org/TR/qaframe-spec/#Gd-extensions

Received on Thursday, 3 July 2003 12:33:50 UTC