RE: Why is "Web Ontology Language" Called "OWL"?

At 9:45 PM -0400 7/13/02, Abir Qasem wrote:
>  > -----Original Message-----
>>  From: www-rdf-logic-request@w3.org
>>  [mailto:www-rdf-logic-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of James Michael DuPont
>>  Sent: Saturday, July 13, 2002 8:55 PM
>>  To: Thomas B. Passin; www-rdf-logic@w3.org
>>  Subject: Re: Why is "Web Ontology Language" Called "OWL"?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  --- "Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@comcast.net> wrote:
>>  >
>>  > Just wondering how it came to be called OWL when the obvious acronym
>>  > would
>>  > be "WOL"?
>>
>>  Because it sounds wiser?
>>
>>
>
>>  Anyway, What is OWL, any good URLS?
>
>Best that I know is http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/WebOnt/
>
>
>>What is the difference to DAML+OIL?
>
>see above URL
>

So far our group has been using the phrase "The Web Ontology Language 
OWL" to put off the (likely) inevitable day when we'll have to move 
to "Ontology Web Language"

DAML+OIL is a W3C note that was created by a small group of ontology 
researchers. It has done quite well as a web language, and thus the 
Web Ontology Working group was created with a charter to create a 
language that would only deviate from DAML+OIL when there was 
significant consensus that we had an improvement over that language. 
To that end, we are currently working on publishing several working 
drafts that represent the current state of our thinking -- these will 
include a short feature overview, a reference document that shows the 
current syntax based on the daml+oil document with pointers to open 
issues from our issues list.  A third document is a new "abstract 
syntax" document that may make it easier for implementors who want to 
explore other syntaxes than RDF/XML to map into the normative RDF/XML 
syntax.

Details can be found at the URI mentioned above, and current editor's 
drafts of the documents are linked to our last face to face page. 
We expect to release these three working drafts within a few weeks.

Here are some URIs for those interested:

WOWG Web Site: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/WebOnt/
WOWG issue tracking: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/WebOnt/webont-issues.html
Our first Working Draft -- a Requirements and Use case documents for web
	ontologies - http://www.w3.org/TR/webont-req/
Our mail archive: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-webont-wg/
The record of our recent face to face meeting - containing pointers to the
	various documents and out resolutions concerning them:
  	http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/WebOnt/ftf3.html


Hope that helps
  Jim Hendler
  Co-chair W3C Web Ontology Working Group





-- 
Professor James Hendler				  hendler@cs.umd.edu
Director, Semantic Web and Agent Technologies	  301-405-2696
Maryland Information and Network Dynamics Lab.	  301-405-6707 (Fax)
Univ of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742	  240-731-3822 (Cell)
http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/hendler

Received on Saturday, 13 July 2002 23:08:59 UTC