RE: GUIDE: New version.

At 2:20 PM -0500 9/25/02, Smith, Michael K wrote:
>I am neutral on what to put in history.  It did seem useful. 
>
>We expect that some of our readers will be familiar with one or more of the
>precursors, and it would help them to set the context.
>
>An option is to note that there were other, less direct precursors, and cite
>them in the Ontology section of the references.
>
>- Mike

Mike - It is certainly the case that SHOE and Ontobroker were direct 
contributors to DAML and OIL respectively.  OML would be a less 
direct, as would  XOL - I could live with those done the way you say.

I do think the history helps -- [1] is the history slide I used at 
the WWW-2002 brief on the WG -- you can see it includes Shoe, 
ontobroker, and OIL for ontologies on the web, MCF and RDF for web 
languages, and DAML+OIL for bringing them together.  Thus, if you use 
the paragraph I sent you, add a mention of the MCF note as a 
predecessor to RDF,  and put the others in the related work area as 
you suggest, your history and mine would be in correspondence, and we 
could include the strong paragraph Peter wrote about OIL/D+O

Other folks should send suggestions for related Web Ontology work if 
we've missed anything
  -JH


[1] http://www.w3.org/2002/Talks/www2002-ont-jh/slide7-0.html

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Jim Hendler [mailto:hendler@cs.umd.edu]
>Sent: Tuesday, September 24, 2002 3:47 PM
>To: Peter F. Patel-Schneider; Smith, Michael K
>Cc: www-webont-wg@w3.org
>Subject: Re: GUIDE: New version.
>
>
>I always worry when we have a history section, because we run the
>risk of leaving things out.  Jeff Heflin would be right to complain
>as SHOE predates both DAML and OIL (and, in fact, RDF) and Dieter and
>his crew might want to see Ontobroker mentioned, as it also predates
>OWL.  I'd suggest amending Peter's history to add these important
>forbears (SHOE was the first ontology language on the web and
>ontobroker was the first to use DL concepts in the web context that I
>know of.
>
>I'd suggest we either drop the history section, or use what Peter
>sent ammended as below to make the time line clear and to acknolwedge
>the earlier work.  In addition, we might want to mention the MCF note
>that was submitted to the W3C and was a forbear to RDF.
>   -Jim H.
>
>
>
>>
>>Suggested new text:
>>
>>
>><p>
>><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-rdf-syntax">The Resource Description
>>Framework (RDF)</a> was the first language specified by the W3C for
>>representing semantic information about arbitrary resources.
>><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/CR-rdf-schema">RDF Schema (RDFS)</a>
>>is a W3C candidate recommendation for an extension to RDF to describe RDF
>>vocabularies.
>>RDFS can be used to create ontologies, but it is purposefully very
>>lightweight so little can be said about the consituents of ontologies in
>>RDFS.
>>Further, RDF and RDFS had only an informal specification of the meaning of
>>their constructs.
>></p>
>>
>><p>
>>Like OWL, RDFS includes classes and properties, as well as
>>range and domain constraints on properties.  It provides
>>inheritance hierarchies for both classes and properties.  Upon its
>>release users began requesting additional features, including data
>>types, enumerations and the ability to define properties more
>>rigorously.
>></p>
>
>
><p> Other efforts in the research community were already examining
>exactly these sorts of features.  As early as 1995, the
><a href="http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/plus/SHOE">
>Simple HTML Ontology Extensions <SHOE> project </a> had been
>exploring the adding of more ontological content to web documents,
>and soon after the <a
>href="http://ontobroker.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/index_ob.html">
>Ontobroker project </a> started, with a focus on annotating sets of
>web pages related to Knowledge Acquisition.  These projects provided
>a testbed for exploring ideas including the use of URIs for embedding
>ontologies on the web, mechanisms for linking and extending
>ontologies, the first explorations of rule-languages for the web, and
>the first attempts at formalizing knowledge representation on the
>web.  SHOE and Ontobroker each resulted in a corpus of marked-up web
>pages, and in papers describing the dos (and don'ts) of using
>ontologies on the web.
>
>
>><p>
>Based on the earlier Ontobroker work, in 1999
>
>   <words deleted>
>
>>a group of European researchers, funded through the
>><a href="http://www.ontoknowledge.org/">On-To-Knowledge project</a> of the
>>E.U., defined an ontology language called
>><a href="http://www.ontoknowledge.org/oil/index.shtml">OIL
>>(Ontology Inference Layer)</a>.
>>OIL was based on ideas from
>><a href="http://dl.kr.org">description logics</a>,
>>frames,
>>and the W3C XML and RDF (including RDFS) languages.
>>OIL was much more powerful than RDFS, but tried to retain some
>>compatability with RDF and RDFS.
>>The basic syntax for OIL was a frame-like syntax, but there was also an
>>RDFS syntax for OIL.
>>OIL was equipped with a full model-theoretic semantics, providing a formal
>>meaning for the language.
>></p>
>>
>
>
>
>><p>
>At about the same time that OIL was being developed, in an attempt to
>extend the expressive power of RDFS,
>
>>a group of U.S. researchers, funded through the
>><a href="http://www.daml.org/">DAML (DARPA Agent Markup
>>Language) program</a> initiated by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research
>Projects
>>Agency, defined a language called
>><a href="http://www.daml.org/2000/10/daml-ont.html">DAML-ONT</a>.
>>This language was also an ontology language, somewhat similar to OIL, but
>>based much more directly on RDFS.
>>The basic syntax for DAML-ONT was the RDF syntax.
>>A <a href="http://www.daml.org/2000/10/DAML-Ont-kif-axioms-001107.html">
>>partial axiomatization</a> in KIF was provided form DAML-ONT.
>></p>
>>
>><p>
>>Instead of continuing with separate ontology languages for the Semantic
>>Web, a group of researchers, including many of the main participants in
>>both the OIL and DAML-ONT efforts, got together in the
>><a href="http://www.daml.org/committee/">Joint US/EU ad hoc Agent Markup
>>Language Committee</a> to create a new web ontology language.
>>This language
>><a href="http://www.daml.org/2001/03/daml+oil-index.html">DAML+OIL</a>
>>builds on both OIL and DAML-ONT, and was
>><a
>>href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-webont-wg/2001Dec/0144.html">
>submitted</a>
>>to the W3C as a proposed
>>basis for OWL and was subsequently selected as the starting point for OWL.
>></p>
>
>
>--
>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


-- 
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 Wednesday, 25 September 2002 19:57:38 UTC