Re: URIs for terms: motivation [was: Requirements Document]

From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
Subject: Re: URIs for terms: motivation [was: Requirements Document]
Date: 08 Feb 2002 16:57:53 -0600

[...]

> > 3/ I want to have some mechanism in OWL that can be used to identify
> >    (global?) XML Schema declarations.
> 
> Do you mean schema components or declarations?
> 
> (cf http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-1/#intro-terminology)
> 
> I want to be able to refer to XML Schema components
> (or types or something) too...
> 
> >  XML Schema seems to indicate that
> >    URIs plus fragment identifiers cannot be used for this purpose,
> 
> Actually, it doesn't say that they cannot; it just doesn't
> make it quite clear that they can, nor how.
> 
> As I pointed out, they don't consider this a long-term solution.
> More recent work is starting to address this issue:

[...]

> I want to be sure URIs(+fragids) can refer to XML Schema components.
> I should tell the www-xml-schema-comments; I think they're
> collecting 1.1 requirements now, after all.
> 
> 
> > Why don't URIs plus fragment identifiers work for XML Schema?  Well, I
> > guess that it is because there can be several portions of an XML Schema
> > with the same ``name''.  That is, there can be both a global type
> > definition and a global element declaration with the same name in an XML
> > Schema document, and both of these are referred to by the same QName.
> > 
> > Is this a bug?  Maybe.  Is it motivated by compatability-with-DTD reasons?
> > I don't think so.  Will it go away?  I don't know, but I'm sure that there
> > would be howls if elements and attributes had to have different names.
> > 
> > What can we do?  I really don't know. All I know is that I want to be able
> > to incorporate XML Schema definitions into ontologies, maybe not now, but
> > certainly later.
> 
> On that we seem to agree; perhaps it's worth adding something to
> that effect in the requiremens document? Hmm...
> 
[...]
> 
> I don't suppose I've convinced you that we should stick to the
> "use URIs(+fragids) for terms" requirement, have I?
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/


I believe that we both want the same thing --- to be able to refer to what
we think we need to, including components of XML Schema documents.  You would
like the method for this to be URIs; I don't really care what it is as long
as it works.

As long as some wording to effect of what we really want is to refer to
these things, I'm relatively happy to let ``URI + fragment'' be the
what-we-use-for-now.  

I would *not* be happy, however, if the needs of WebOnt were used as
ammunition in any battle over the issue.

peter

Received on Friday, 8 February 2002 22:23:29 UTC