ISSUE-15: RESOLVED: Ontologies should not be required to include a URI

ontology names

RESOLVED: Ontologies should not be required to include a URI

State:

CLOSED

Product:

Raised by:

Jeremy Carroll

Opened on:

2007-10-24

Description:

Reported by jlc415, Jun 11, 2007

The current specification *requires* that each ontology include a URI.

The ability to specify an ontology URI (along the lines of setting a "base" in xml or html files) can be
useful, but is completely inappropriate in many settings: the identifier for an ontology which does
not declare a URI should be inferred from other information (such as its location).

Duplicating an ontology with a URI requires editing the file itself, which disallows use of OWL files
with most systems providing automatic maintenance of different versions of the same file. For
example, it would be valuable to be able to check OWL into a CVS, subversion, or GIT repository and
then link to either the head of a particular branch or to a specific version, where these different
versions are served on the web from URIs automatically assigned by the version control system. If
the ontology includes a URI this is not possible.

As a fix, I propose making the URI of an ontology optional.

Related Actions Items:

• ACTION-41 on Boris Motik to Imports proposal 3 - due 2007-12-20, closed
• ACTION-38 on Bijan Parsia to Imports scenarios - due 2008-01-08, closed

Related emails:

1. proposed response to LC comment 7 (from pfps@research.bell-labs.com on 2009-02-12)
2. Re: Ontology locations: OntologyURI vs. xml:base and namespaces (ISSUE-21) (from hoekstra@uva.nl on 2008-05-21)
3. RE: Ontology locations: OntologyURI vs. xml:base and namespaces (ISSUE-21) (from boris.motik@comlab.ox.ac.uk on 2008-05-21)
4. Re: Ontology locations: OntologyURI vs. xml:base and namespaces (ISSUE-21) (from hoekstra@uva.nl on 2008-05-21)
5. RE: Ontology locations: OntologyURI vs. xml:base and namespaces (ISSUE-21) (from boris.motik@comlab.ox.ac.uk on 2008-05-21)
6. Ontology locations: OntologyURI vs. xml:base and namespaces (ISSUE-21) (from hoekstra@uva.nl on 2008-05-19)
7. Re: ISSUE-15: Ontologies should not be required to include a URI (from pfps@research.bell-labs.com on 2008-03-15)
8. Re: ISSUE-15: Ontologies should not be required to include a URI (from pfps@research.bell-labs.com on 2008-01-23)
9. ISSUE-15: Ontologies should not be required to include a URI (from pfps@research.bell-labs.com on 2008-01-07)
10. Re: ISSUE-15 (ontology names): REPORTED: Ontologies should not be required to include a URI (from hoekstra@uva.nl on 2007-11-07)
11. Re: ISSUE-15 (ontology names): REPORTED: Ontologies should not be required to include a URI (from hoekstra@uva.nl on 2007-11-07)
12. ISSUE-15 (ontology names): REPORTED: Ontologies should not be required to include a URI (from sysbot+tracker@w3.org on 2007-10-24)

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