OWL and ontologies

[David Allen]

I've been recently reading up on OWL and some of the topics related to the Semantic Web. It seems though that while OWL became an official recommendation a while back, there isn't much use of it outside of the research world. (i.e. sample implementation reasoners, parsers, etc but no higher level apps built on the underlying facilities OWL might provide)

As I read the recommendation on OWL, a lot of its structure seemed like Prolog and normal propositional logic, with extra extensions for the notions of object-orientation and classes, wrapped up in XML. I haven't seen any references to this other material though, so I'm left to believe that either it doesn't apply (and hence pointers to resources on learning that material wouldn't be helpful, because there wouldn't be any carry-over) or the community just hasn't built itself yet.

One thought that crossed my mind was that it might be unrealistic for web publishers to publish ontologies related to their subject material when they don't even know what an ontology is, how to use it, or how to write one. Meanwhile, visions of "the semantic web" dance in our heads. (Oh yeah, and sugarplums as well)

Searching this group has yielded only a few messages on OWL - am I in the wrong place (there doesn't seem to be a group devoted to OWL) or I am just noticing the conspicuous chirping of crickets? Is there any moving and/or shaking going on in the world of OWL?

 

[Dominic Myers]

I've been recently reading up on OWL and some of the topics related to the Semantic Web. It seems though that while OWL became an official recommendation a while back, there isn't much use of it outside of the
--snip--<

Hi there David,

I'm expecting to be shot down in flames right about now but OWL doesn't seem to be getting the airing it really requires in order to take off. But the same could be said of most of the Semantic Web stuff that was going to make the internet so much more useful... I still use google and that's about it really... perhaps that's only me?

The people over at Stanford working on the Protégé Project do loads on OWL and have a separate mailing list at <http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.misc.ontology.protege.owl> dedicated to that aspect of ontologies which you can subscribe to, perhaps that's where you'd be better off looking for specific stuff?

I had a little crack at using ontologies myself
(<http://camshag.co.uk/svg/NHSTrust/index.html>) and I found that they can be useful in combination with javascript.

Hope that helps and I hope you find what you're looking for,

Cheers,

Dom

 

[Andy Dingley]

I've been recently reading up on OWL and some of the topics related to the Semantic Web.

You're not the only one, but sometimes it does feel that way.

I second the recommendation for Protege. I was at their user group meeting last year in Manchester and was really blown away by the quality and variety of the work that was already happening - now a couple of years ago! Another eye-opener was speaking at the excellent "Museums and the Web" conference, or rather _listening_ at it (unlike the (in)famous keynote speaker who made an ass of himself), and finding just how far ahead of "the web industry" the museum and library people already were.

This stuff _is_ happening. It's just not very visible yet.