Feature Synopsis Review

This review is limited to those issues indicated in:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-webont-wg/2002Dec/0320.html

The feature synopsis is badly misleading/incorrect on these issues.

In particular the last paragraph of section one incorrectly suggests that OWL 
DL and OWL Full differ semantically rather than syntactically.
No awareness of the syntactic restrictions on OWL Lite or OWL DL other than 
the vocabulary is indicated.
The summary suggests that OWL has two levels OWL Lite and OWL Full, rather 
than three levels ...


The header information section 3.6 needs updating (I am not sure which of the 
header stuff is in OWL Lite or OWL DL; maybe there is a need for a new 
section "OWL DL Header Information").

The document needs another section to indicate the relationship between RDF 
instance data and OWL Lite instance data. Specifically RDF instance data is 
only OWL Lite instance data if the following conditions are met:

- any class used is explicitly declared as of type owl:Class.
- no bnode is the object of two or more triples.
- any datatypes used are explicitly declared as of type rdfs:Datatype

(such class and datatype declarations must be explicitly in the file; an 
imports is insufficient). Given that syntax is explicitly excluded from the 
scope of this document, it may suffice simply to say that there are 
restrictions.

The treatment of Dublin Core metadata needs expanding. As is, the document is 
contradicted by the mapping rules. The mapping rules only permit annotations 
being simple triples where the subject is the document and the object is a 
URIref or literal value. Dublin Core metadata also permits the object to be a 
complex structure e.g. represented by a blank node or uri ref with further 
triples defining it.

A further problem is the discussion of intersectionOf.
The mapping rules from the OWL Lite abstact syntax use intersectionOf and so 
it is incorrect to assign it only to OWL DL/OWL Full. However, the use in OWL 
Lite is highly restricted.

Overall I agree with Peter that this document should be merged into the 
reference. The exclusion of syntactic considerations from the scope of this 
document is a critical omission for a recommendation that if it is to serve 
any purpose acts to define the OWL Lite/OWL DL/OWL Full levels.



More minor points
==============

Suggest delete all references to DAML+OIL. (Superfluous).
In Introduction penultimare para suggest delete sentences 2 and 3 from "The 
goal of OWL Lite .... will flock." (Superfluous).

The reference to the mailing list at the end of section 3.4 is inappropriate 
in a recommendation in my view.

The last sentence about previous versions is superfuous - and should be 
deleted.


Jeremy

Received on Tuesday, 31 December 2002 12:15:32 UTC