Semantic Web Activity News

The W3C OWL Working Group published seven documents related to the OWL 2 Web Ontology Language. OWL 2 extends OWL adding new features that users have requested and that software providers are prepared to implement. The documents are:

1. Structural Specification and Functional-Style Syntax
2. Direct Semantics
3. RDF-Based Semantics (First Public Draft)
4. Mapping to RDF Graphs
5. XML Serialization
6. Profiles
7. Conformance and Test Cases (First Public Draft)

The first three documents form the technical core of OWL 2, which has both a traditional "direct" semantics (for OWL DL) and a new "RDF-based" semantics (for OWL Full). Documents 4 and 5 specify two different serializations for OWL ontologies, one based on RDF and one using XML more directly. Document 6 defines useful subsets of OWL which may be easier to implement or may better meet certain performance requirements. Finally, document 7 specifies conformance and will later enumerate the OWL 2 test cases. Five other documents are under development; but they are not yet ready for public review.