Project Plan: ISO 15926 part 2 in OWL/RDF

This page is a project plan for arriving at a conclusion to the base definitional representation of ISO 15926 in OWL/RDF, as examined on the ISO 15926 in OWL page. This OWL representation of ISO 15926 (dubbed "internal OWL") is being created in parallel to another OWL representation (dubbed "external OWL").

Main aims for the internal format include (cf. diagram)

• Give a faithful representation in description logic of the standardized Express representation of ISO 15926 (Parts 2, 4)
• Provide a basis on which to build Part 7 in first-order logic

Main aims for the external format include

• Support standard RDF tools (information discovery)
• Support standard OWL tools (ontology methods)

The external format will likely be defined as a lossy translation of the internal format (what "lossy" means in practice is a topic for discussion, though). Whether the whole of Part 7 is suitable for an external format to be used in standard semantic web tools is an open question, but not entirely unlikely. This depends crucially on the expressive power of OWL (& co.). See the pointer to "structured objects" on SigMmt#Links for a recent development.

The timescale of the development of these two different representations of ISO 15926 in OWL also differs as the fundamental goals are somewhat different, but nevertheless, there is a need to make them as orthogonal as possible. Certainly, the external form should be able to be generated from the internal form. Ideally the external form should be a superset of the internal form (though this may only end up being true for some elements).

Milestones

October 2008 - since the "internal OWL" is needed as the foundation of the "external OWL" (or at least an informative reference for it), then as much as possible of the the principles and basics of the representation should be completed during the external OWL cycles as specified in the companion project plan.

September 2009 - ISO 15926 part 7 is due to be published as of this date, and the "internal OWL" representation will be needed for validating the ISO 15926 base templates and methodology defined in this document. It is likely that the OWL representation will evolve with the base template material, so ultimately it should reach its final form by the time part 7 is published.

Resources

Minimally this will require the input of Johan W. Klüwer, Martin G. Skjæveland, Onno Paap, Rahul Patil and Julian Bourne. My impression is that Johan and Martin will lead the work, with the others providing mostly feedback and "sanity checks" as it progresses.