WEBONT "HOMEWORK" (DUE DATE approaching!)

Web Ontology Working Group
"Homework" assignment
Due: Nov 29 telecon for discussion
   (written responses earlier to mailing list encouraged)

ASSIGNMENT: Answer the question "HOW WILL YOU USE THE LANGUAGE?"

I would like each member (or member organization) to think about what 
the goals of the web ontology language should be. In particular, I'd 
like you to think about what your organization would like to see done 
with the language -- creating web ontologies is obviously not an end 
in itself -- I want to know what you see the language being used for.

WHY

This will be the beginning of an effort for us to define some 
specific examples that we will test language features and tool 
implementations against.  My plan is to start from the brainstorming 
above, attempt to categorize the inputs into some smaller set of 
classes, and then have subgroups team to write a page or two 
description of each (for now) and then to eventually become the ones 
who make sure what we are developing works for those cases.  Not 
every member of the WG will necessarily want to work on the use cases 
and implementation issues, but for now I'd request everyone 
participate in helping us to brainstorm on an idea of what the space 
of uses for the ontology language will be.

DETAILS

Pretend it was not us, but some other group that developed a language 
for representing content on the web.  Think about how would you 
evaluate whether to use that language?  You can assume that group 
provides some king of a tool kit, and that you are trying to decide 
whether to use this language.

* How would you test to see if the tools could support your needs?

* What would you want to do with this language?

* What features of the language would you look for and why (again, 
please make your arguments in terms of using the language, not in 
terms of the "aesthetics" of the design)?

DUE DATES:
  Please feel free to discuss any and all of this on the mailing list.

  Nov 29: We will ask each participant in the telecon to present their 
cases (with no interuptions) in a "brainstorming" mode.  We will then 
open up to general discussion

  Dec 20: Last telecon before we take a break for various Solstice holidays
    We will have categorized these and will have assigned leads to develop each.



REMINDER:
  Please remember that webont WG mailing list and telecons are 
archived.  Be careful to make sure your cases are not directly 
related to your organizations' proprietary needs, unless you are 
willing to share them.
-- 
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)
AV Williams Building, Univ of Maryland		  College Park, MD 20742
http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/hendler

Received on Wednesday, 21 November 2001 16:54:41 UTC