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Working Group named WebOnt in the W3C Semantic
Web Activity aimed at
“extending the semantic reach of current XML and RDF meta-data
efforts.“ |
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Author persepective – next step for DAML+OIL
rollout; starting point –
Joint Committee language spec, route to broader user base / greater impact,
… |
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History |
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W3C Announcement in November 2001 - http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-logic/2001Nov/0000.html |
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Weekly teleconferences starting in November 2001 |
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DAML+OIL as WebOnt starting point is submitted
as a joint committee effort authored by Connolly, van Harmelen, Horrocks,
McGuinness, Patel-Schneider, and Stein as a W3C note in December 2001. |
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First Face to Face Meeting in January 2002 in
New Jersey with roughly quarterly meetings following expected in: |
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Amsterdam in April |
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United States (Stanford or Boston) in July |
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Europe in the fall |
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Chartered to design “A Web ontology language,
that builds on current Web languages that allow the specification of
classes and subclasses, properties and subproperties (such as RDFS), |
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but which extends these constructs to allow more
complex relationships between entities including: |
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means to limit the properties of classes with
respect to number and type, |
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means to infer that items with various
properties are members of a particular class, |
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a well-defined model of property inheritance,
and |
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similar semantic extensions to the base
languages.” |
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The products of the WebONT group should not
presuppose any particular approach to either ontology design or ontology
use. In addition, the language must support the development and linking of
ontologies together, in a web-like manner. |
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The products of this working group must be
supported by a formal semantics allowing language designers, tool builders,
and other "experts" to be able to precisely understand the
meaning and "legal" inferences for expressions in the language. |
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The language will use the XML syntax and
datatypes wherever possible, and will be designed for maximum compatibility
with XML and RDF language conventions. |
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Full Charter available: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/WebOnt/charter |
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WebOnt is focusing on getting out the language
in a timely manner and is scoping its efforts to facilitate progress. We have defined areas that are OUT
of scope including: |
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Rules (such as RuleML) |
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Query Languages (such as DQL) |
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Universal Web Logic – logic able to express any
web content |
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Agent Communication Languages – agent languages
and infrastructure |
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Current Membership list includes 49
members. Geographically
distributed largely in Europe, North America, and Japan. |
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Industry
including for example: |
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large companies such as Daimler Chrysler, EDS,
Fujitsu, HP, Lucent, Nokia, Philips Electronics, Unisys, … |
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newer/smaller companies such as Adaptive Media, IVIS
Group, Network Inference, Stilo Technology, Unicorn Solutions, … |
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Government and Not-For-Profits including for
example: |
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Defense Information Systems Agency, Intelink
Management Office, Interoperability Technology Association for Information
Processing, Japan (INTAP) , Mitre, … |
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Universities and Research Centers including for
example: |
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University of Bristol, University of Maryland,
University of Southamptom, Stanford University, … |
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DFKI (German Research Center for Artificial
Intelligence), Forschungszentrum Informatik |
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Invited Experts (largely academic non-W3C members) |
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http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/WebOnt/ contains information concerning: |
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Current Events |
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Schedule/Milestones |
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Membership |
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Charter/History (including link to Face to Face
Meeting) |
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Background References & Related work – quite
useful collection of links |
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http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/WebOnt/ftf1.html
contains information on |
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Participants (including at least 6 DAML contractors – Dean, Decker,
Finin, Horrocks, McGuinness, Stein) |
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Preparation Materials including: |
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Use Cases:
(drivers for language requirements) |
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Collection Management and update– Schreiber |
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Interoperability and update– Obrst |
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Services - Decker |
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General Requirements/Goals document and update–
Heflin/McGuinness (indicators for modifications to DAML+OIL) |
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DAML+OIL Issues and Experiences – Dean (feedback for DAML+OIL) |
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Layering Issues and update–
Patel-Schneider/Fensel |
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Other issues such as tractability of decision
procedures, full logs of meeting available. |
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Collection Management - Schreiber
- large data/text/image/multimedia/website sets with a common theme |
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Interoperability – Obrst - capability to send
and receive content supported by ontologies across applications with
retention of semantics, the ability to map between different ontologies in
a semantics preserving manner |
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Services – Decker – services defined by examples
of travel agent, advertising/matching services, automated configuration of
services/devices… |
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Requirements/Goals – McGuinness – requirements
are specifications that must be met in order for WebOnt to be considered
done. |
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Results in a poll of results for requirements
and goals |
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W3C Note on Use Cases and Requirements/Goals |
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Includes use cases on: web portals (Ontoweb), image collection, corporate
web site management, design documentation, intelligent agents
(AgentCities), and ubiquitous computing |
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Design goals/motivations: shared ontologies,
ontology evolution, inconsistency detection, ontology interoperability,
expressiveness/scalability balance, ease of use, XML syntax,
internationalization. |
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Requirements: ontologies with unique
identifiers, unambiguous term referencing, explicit ontology extension,
commitment to ontologies, ontology metadata, versioning, class definition
primitives, property definition primitives, datatypes, class and property
equivalence, local unique names assumption, closed world statements,
classes as instances, complex data types, cardinality constraints, lexical
representations, character model, and Unicode support for
internationalization. |
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White paper on how requirements currently are
supported by DAML+OIL
(Class of requirements – Class A below) |
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Ontology namespaces/inter-ontology reference:
yes. |
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Annotation/tagging of ontologies (some
particular properties): yes? |
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lexical representation (internationalization): almost |
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unambiguous term referencing using URIs: yes |
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ability to state unique names: no/somewhat |
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uniqueness of Unicode strings: yes |
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character set support: yes |
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ontology management language features
(versioning): ? |
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A forthcoming layering proposal (a draft) |
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WebOnt’s OWL today looks like it will be similar
to DAML+OIL however some requirements will require modifications. |
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Leads to TRANSITION issues |
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WebOnt begins with stable language of DAML+OIL
and its tool environments |
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Expectations are that transition to OWL will not
be difficult and will be able to be automatically done |
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Timeframe for re-evaluation is expected to be
about a month |
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W3C integration is an excellent framework in
which to facilitate both technology push (dissemination of language/tools)
and pull (specifications/requirements from broad community). This connection accelerates
the broad impact of the DAML program. |
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instructions |
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Review the Charter/History |
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Ask your W3C Advisory Committee Representative to
nominate you in email to: [email protected] |
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Interested in staying literate? Review the: |
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main
web site |
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Archives including irc chat logs |
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Related mailing lists/archives such as RDF-Logic,
W3C-rdfcore-wg archives, semantic web archives, rdf-rules, www archives, … |
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Class B requirements |
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Relational types (transitive, reflexive,
symmetric,…) |
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Class as instance |
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Ontology mapping (equivalent to) |
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Ontology partitioning |
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Complex datatypes |
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Closed world assertions |
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Tagging/ grouping |
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Class C |
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Layering
(both similar to oil
and layering on rdfs) |
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Effective decision procedures |
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Commitment to portions of ontologies |
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Notes