RE: URIs : How to find the ontologies behind them

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ext Eli Israel [mailto:Eli@SemanticWorld.Org]
> Sent: 09 April, 2003 18:42
> To: Peter F. Patel-Schneider
> Cc: www-rdf-interest@w3.org
> Subject: Re: URIs : How to find the ontologies behind them
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <pfps@research.bell-labs.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2003 4:01 PM
> Subject: Re: URIs : How to find the ontologies behind them
> 
> 
> > From: "Eli Israel" <Eli@SemanticWorld.Org>
> > Subject: URIs : How to find the ontologies behind them
> > Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 13:08:04 +0300
> >
> > > A question about URIs:
> > >
> > > The URI for a class does not have to point to a 
> particular resource on
> the
> > > web, it just has to be unique.  An ontology describing 
> that entity may
> be
> > > located somewhere else entirely.
> > >
> > > If an ontology refers to this class by its URI, how is 
> additional, or
> even
> > > primary, information about that class supposed to be found?
> >
> > Well, just about anywhere, at least in the general case.  
> For example,
> > suppose that the class is rdfs:Class.  Information about 
> rdfs:Class can be
> > found in just about any RDF document.
> >
> > Of course, there are very many cases where a lot of 
> information about a
> > class (or any other property) should be found (maybe not 
> now, but when the
> > Semantic Web actually gets going) by dereferencing a URI 
> related to the
> URI
> > references of the class.  Of course, this would only be one 
> organization's
> > information about the class, and other agents might reasonably have
> > different views.
> Thanks for the quick response.
> 
> I'm primarily interested in the 'when the SW gets going' case 
> (it's about
> time we get it going, no? ;).  You seem to be saying that a 
> best practice
> would be to put the OWL describing the resource in the place 
> that the URI of
> the resource refers to.
> 
> If OWL documents are named seperate from their namespaces, 
> and an agent
> can't find the document by following the URI, it would have 
> to rely on an
> index of documents describing entities.  How would these 
> documents be found,
> registered, etc.?  They wouldn't be naturally interlinked through the
> ontologies, they would have to be dug up on the www, or 
> registered in a
> repository.
> 
> It seems like the easiest way is to place the ontology describing the
> concept at the URI for the concept, no?

Exactly. This is the approach that URIQA takes. 

Patrick

--
Patrick Stickler, Nokia/Finland, (+358 40) 801 9690, patrick.stickler@nokia.com

Received on Thursday, 10 April 2003 02:18:53 UTC