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2006-11-12

More on RDF++

Some months ago I blogged about RDF++, an extension of RDF(S). I presented the concept (RDF enhanced with owl:sameAs and owl:InverseFunctionalProperty) at the W3C Advisory Committee meeting back in May, and have talked about it in some recent keynotes as well. Generally, people tend to agree that it is a good idea. Many have already used a similar language. I guess it just makes sense (and there are many applications that don't need a more expressive representation language).

Jim Hendler and I decided to write some kind of a specification of the language, but haven't gotten around to doing it yet. Jim's recent blog entry about OWL 1.1 etc. says the following:

Ora Lassila made a proposal similar to this to the W3C AC meeting in Edinburgh, and was encouraged to pursue it, he and I are working on producing some sort of description and semantics (axiomatic - because this should fit nicely on a business rules base) — I should admit it is probably my foot-dragging that is causing the problem now [...]

That's nice, but I am sure it is more my foot dragging that's delayed it. I did manage to write the axiomatic semantics, though, so maybe we'll make some progress soon.

Many people have proposed other features to be added as well, such as inverse properties and transitivity. Sure, why not. WilburQL gives those at the level of the query language so I don't really care that much. What I do care about is that the language not have features that introduce restrictions (such as disjointness).

In the aforementioned blog entry, Jim also comments on the new OWL 1.1 syntax:

And I should mention now, early, and in public, that if the "charter" being circulated for OWL 1.1 were to come to a W3C I would oppose it on the grounds that moving away from the RDF syntax is a non-starter with me [...]

I agree. A lot has been invested in the RDF syntax (regardless of how you personally feel about it). And besides, any new syntax I would ever support would have to be based on S-expressions.

Posted by ora at 21:56