Re: [regrep] Comments on "ebXML Registry Profile for Web Ontologies" draft 5

[ewallace@cme.nist.gov]

Farrukh Najmi wrote the following regarding the RegRep profile for OWL:

>2.1.1 RDF Schema Features
>
>Suggest having a section prior to this that gives a table giving brief 
>descriptions of the namespaces used and their prefixes (e.g. rfd, rdfs)

Be careful.  The current section 2.1.1 lists only the elements of RDF and RDFS 
vocabularies particularly relevant to OWL.  Even then, it could be slightly
misleading to a non-Semantic Web person.  The issues are:
- Thing, Nothing and Individual are all in the owl vocabulary (namespace),
- there is a different term for "Class" in each of RDFS and OWL vocabularies.  
However, the categorization is straight from OWL Overview (as the profile
indicates), so there is surely a good reason for it.  Also, the non-OWL
vocabulary terms include prefixes, so they can still be distinguished. 

But perhaps you are just looking for a section something like:

       Semantic Web Languages upon which OWL is Layered

  OWL is one of a set of languages defined for the Semantic Web.  It 
  occupies the Ontology layer of an architecture sometimes referred to 
  as the Semantic Web Layer Cake.  This moniker alludes to the fact that 
  each language in the architecture sits on top of another while 
  exposing some of the layer below is is often seen of a wedding cake.  
  OWL is situated in this architecture directly above the RDF Vocabulary 
  Description Language: RDF Schema (RDFS) [1]. RDFS is a language for 
  defining vocabularies or models with which to describe or categorize 
  resources in the semantic web.  RDFS, in turn, sits atop the Resource 
  Description Framework (RDF) [2].  RDF provides a basic data model, XML 
  based transfer syntax, and other basic tools.  The whole Semantic Web 
  stack itself then sits atop XML technologies which are used for 
  identification and syntax definition.

  Namespace information for these languages is given in the table below.  

		Semantic Web namespace table

  ---------------------------------------------------------------
  |  Commonly used  |	Namespace URI Reference			 |
  |	Prefix	    |   					 |
  ----------------------------------------------------------------
  | 	rdf	    | http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#|
  |	rdfs	    | http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#	 |
  |	owl	    | http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#		 |
  ---------------------------------------------------------------

  The following section discusses elements of OWL along with a few 
  elements of RDF and RDFS which are most important to users of OWL.
  In this section Terms from RDF and RDFS vocabularies are 
  distinguished from OWL terms by the inclusion of the appropriate 
  prefix as given in the table above.

  [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/
  [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-concepts/


-Evan