Re: GoodRelations - The Web Ontology for E-Commerce

Hi Michael:

Thanks! As for relating it to [1]: As for as I understand that work, it 
is mostly about describing what a product *is*. GoodRelations is about 
describing the offers of such products. So [1] is for me rather an 
extension of what eClassOWL is providing - a vocabulary for products, 
and for exchanging vocabularies of products. The main overlap I see is 
that GoodRelations also contains (and must contain) a small top-level 
ontology for product ontologies, which is like a very small subset of 
what you can do with STEP.

I am pretty sure that this part can be extended in a compatible way so 
that it will be aligned with [1], but this very much depends on the 
actual modeling of [1] in OWL or future versions of OWL.

The primary goal of GoodRelations is to do **now what can be done now** 
with the current version of OWL on current, popular infrastructure. It's 
about making Semantic-Web-based e-commerce a reality in 2008...

By the way, instructions on how to create own GoodRelations-compliant 
ontologies for products and services are at

http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/documentation/vocabulary-dev

So in short: I personally think both efforts should eventually converge. 
But, based on a couple of years of work on simpler problems than those 
in the scope of the incubator group, I think it will be at least a few 
years down the road until the ambitious goals of the incubator group can 
be turned into deployable results.

Note that GoodRelations and eClassOWL 5.1.4 in combination are readily 
available
1. in current W3C languages,
2. usable on current infrastructure (repositories + reasoners)
3. compliant with all known W3C best practices.

You can really start annotating offers TODAY. I am not joking...

We will also provide a GoodRelations Annotator (like the "foaf-a-matic" 
of GoodRelations) and a Validation Services that helps keeping up data 
quality.

Best

Martin


Hausenblas, Michael wrote:
> Martin,
>
> Great work! We'll very likely soon be able use it in our UAd project. One question, though, I wanted to ask you already at ESWC08 but (seems both) didn't find the time to talk in greater detail: How is this work related to the W3C Product Modelling Incubator Group [1]?
>
> Cheers,
>  Michael
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/w3pm/
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>  Michael Hausenblas, MSc.
>  Institute of Information Systems & Information Management
>  JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH
>   
>  http://www.joanneum.at/iis/
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>  
>
>   
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: semantic-web-request@w3.org 
>> [mailto:semantic-web-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Martin Hepp
>> Sent: Monday, August 11, 2008 11:22 AM
>> To: semantic-web at W3C
>> Subject: ANN: GoodRelations - The Web Ontology for E-Commerce
>>
>> Dear all:
>>
>> We are proud to announce the official release of the GoodRelations
>> ontology, a comprehensive effort for making e-commerce on the Semantic
>> Web a reality.
>>
>> GoodRelations is a lightweight yet sophisticated vocabulary for
>> describing the details of offers made on the Web. It empowers
>> manufacturers and shop operators to express the exact meaning of their
>> offers in a machine-readable way. This allows search engines to support
>> more precise search, and partners in the value chain to automate their
>> content integration tasks.
>>
>> 1. Project page
>> http://purl.org/goodrelations/
>> 2. Ontology
>> http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1
>> 3. Specification (via client-side rendering)
>> http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1
>> 3. User's Guide
>> http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/primer/
>>
>> GoodRelations complements the eClassOWL ontology, which is the first
>> non-toy ontology for products and services. Since the initial 
>> release of
>> eClassOWL at ESWC 2005, that ontology has gained remarkable attention.
>> The latest version 5.1.4 provides more than 30,000 product classes and
>> more than 5,000 attributes for describing product features.
>>
>> The relationship between these two ontologies is straightforward:
>> - eClassOWL provides classes, attributes, and values for 
>> describing what
>> a product or service is.
>> - GoodRelations provides everything needed for describing the
>> relationship between a business entity and a product or service, i.e.,
>> the actual offer and its details. That’s also the origin of the name –
>> it’s an ontology for the relations between goods and business entities.
>>
>> While eClassOWL is the largest ontology for products and services, one
>> can use any other products or services ontology in combination with
>> GoodRelations. Only a few guidelines must be met.
>> For example, the Austrian ebSemantics initiative is close to release
>> several products and services ontologies for particular 
>> domains (events,
>> tickets, accommodation, etc.) that will be GoodRelations-compliant.
>>
>> The main features of GoodRelations are as follows:
>> - Based on currently available Semantic Web standards, tools, and
>> infrastructure (“ready to run as of today”)
>> - Minimal requirements on reasoner support – any RDF-S-style reasoner,
>> OWL DLP, DL, or ter-Horst reasoner will work
>> - Support for all common business functions, like sell, lease, dispose,
>> repair, etc.
>> - Suits both for explicit instances, product models, and 
>> anonymous instances
>> - Supports different prices for different types of customers 
>> or quantities
>> - Supports product bundles in combination with all kinds of units of
>> measurements (“2 kg butter plus 2 cell phones for € 99” would 
>> be no problem)
>> - Supports price specifications both as single values or ranges
>> - Supports intervals and units of measurements for product features
>> - Compatible with eClassOWL and other ontologies
>> - Supports ISO 4217 currencies
>> - Supports defining eligible regions
>> - Supports common delivery and shipping methods
>> - Supports accepted payment methods
>> - Offerings can be constrained to certain eligible business entities
>> (e.g. resellers only)
>> - Supports warranty promises, i.e., the duration and scope
>> - Supports charges for certain payment or delivery options; the latter
>> also individually per region
>> - Compatible with international standards: ISO 3166, ISO 4217,
>> UN/CEFACT, eCl@ss, etc.
>>
>> GoodRelations is the result of about five years of work in progress,
>> carried out at multiple institutions. The ontology is released under a
>> Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.
>>
>> Any feedback is very much appreciated! Also, if you need support in
>> adopting GoodRelations to your applications or data, please contact us.
>> We are already working with several organizations on making
>> GoodRelations part of their technology.
>>
>> Best wishes
>>
>> Martin Hepp
>> -------------------------------------------------------
>> e-business and web science research group
>> bundeswehr university munich
>> e-mail mhepp@computer.org
>> skype  mfhepp
>> web    http://www.heppnetz.de
>>
>>
>>
>>