All,
We had a discussion, without a real outcome, about issues of access to
the DCterms vocabulary in RDF.[1][2] The problem there was (in my words)
that the first de-reference point for a request for the vocabulary
responds with the web page, not the vocabulary. This means that some
"default" requests from within software return something that isn't
usable, and this confuses people.
Recently on the Protege support list, someone was trying to include the
DC elements (DCE) vocabulary and that was failing, although for a
different reason.[3] DC elements are not imported at all into Protege. I
haven't tried with other software (if others can do so that would be
very useful, thanks), but according to the developer responsible for the
Manchester RDF2OWL software,[4] DCE does not provide enough information
for *any* conversion to OWL using that software (which is very widely
used). To remedy this, he suggested (in a private email) that there be
an OWL version of DCE that explicitly designates the terms as
owl:annotationProperty. [5] Stanford Protege provides such a file as a
plugin. Of course, that is not an official DCMI version. [6]
I do see a bit of tension at the moment between OWL vocabularies and
RDF, so some may not see this as a problem. However, as OWL becomes more
popular, in part because of the availability of tools, it is easy to see
that it would be desirable for folks to be able to use DCE in
combination with OWL vocabularies.
I am far from expert in this area, so I leave this to others to discuss
the technical details, but I do feel strongly that both DCterms and DCE
should be available for use under what are becoming "normal
circumstances" in linked data development, especially by those who are
not expert enough to overcome the problems that these currently present.
kc
[1] Beginning of thread:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind1405&L=DC-ARCHITECTURE&P=R2&1=DC-ARCHITECTURE&9=A&J=on&d=No+Match%3BMatch%3BMatches&z=4
[2] Tom Baker's summary:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind1405&L=DC-ARCHITECTURE&P=R1555&1=DC-ARCHITECTURE&9=A&J=on&d=No+Match%3BMatch%3BMatches&z=4
[3]
http://protege-project.136.n4.nabble.com/Import-DC-ontology-tp4661155p4661303.html
[4] http://mowl-power.cs.man.ac.uk:8080/converter/
[5] In fact, it would seem that owl:dataProperty would not be a bad
solution, IMO, because most DCE values are strings, and
annotationProperty's seem to be 3rd-class citizens in the OWL universe,
ignored in some cases.
[6] http://protege.stanford.edu/plugins/owl/dc/protege-dc.owl
--
Karen Coyle
[log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet/+1-510-984-3600
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