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<p><a href="../../../"><img src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/w3c_home.gif"
alt="W3C" /></a>  <a href="/TandS/"><img src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/tands"
alt="Technology and Society domain" /></a> * <a href="../">Semantic Web
Activity</a></p>

<p><em>As of July 2003, this is obsolete in favor of <a href="http://www.w3.org/2002/11/swv2/charters/WebOntologyCharter">new charter</a></em>.</p>

<h1>Web Ontology (WebONT) Working Group Charter</h1>
<ol>
  <li><a href="#L778">Scope</a>

    <ol>
      <li>Web Ontology Language</li>
      <li>General Requirement</li>
      <li>Out of Scope</li>
    </ol>
  </li>
  <li><a href="#L880">Deliverables and Schedule</a></li>
  <li><a href="#L896">Relationship with Other Activities</a></li>
  <li><a href="#L906">Membership, Meetings, and Logistics</a>

    <ol type="1">
      <li>Email Communication</li>
      <li>Group Home Page</li>
      <li>Telephone Meetings</li>
      <li>Face-to-Face Meetings</li>
    </ol>
  </li>
  <li><a href="#L5131">Resources</a>

    <ol>
      <li>W3C Team Involvement</li>
    </ol>
  </li>
  <li><a href="#L409">Intellectual Property</a></li>
</ol>

<h2 id="L473"><a name="L778">1. Scope of Web Ontology Working Group</a></h2>

<p>This Working Group, part of the <a
href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw">Semantic Web Activity</a>, will focus on the
development of a language to extend the semantic reach of current XML and RDF
meta-data efforts. In particular, in a recent talk on the Semantic Web, Tim
Berners-Lee, Director of the W3C, outlined the <a
href="http://www.w3.org/2000/Talks/1206-xml2k-tbl/slide10-0.html">necessary
layers</a> for developing applications that depend on an understanding of
logical content, not just human-readable presentation. This working group
will focus on building the ontological layer and the formal underpinnings
thereof.</p>

<p>Such language layers are crucial to the emerging Semantic Web, as they
allow the explicit representation of term vocabularies and the relationships
between entities in these vocabularies. In this way, they go beyond XML, RDF
and RDF-S in allowing greater machine readable content on the web. A further
necessity is for such languages to be based on a clear semantics
(denotational and/or axiomatic) to allow tool developers and language
designers to unambiguously specify the expected meaning of the semantic
content when rendered in the Web Ontology syntax.</p>

<p>Specifically, the Web Ontology Working Group is chartered to design the
following component:</p>
<ul type="disc">
  <li>A Web ontology language, that builds on current Web languages that
    allow the specification of classes and subclasses, properties and
    subproperties (such as RDFS), but which extends these constructs to allow
    more complex relationships between entities including: means to limit the
    properties of classes with respect to number and type, means to infer
    that items with various properties are members of a particular class, a
    well-defined model of property inheritance, and similar semantic
    extensions to the base languages.
    <p>The <a href="http://www.daml.org/2001/03/daml+oil-index.html">March
    2001 DAML+OIL specification</a>, discussed in some detail in section <a
    href="#L398">1.1 below</a> serves as an example of an ontology language -
    a <a href="http://www.daml.org/language/features.html">comparison of
    DAML+OIL to XML, XML-schema, and RDF-Schema</a> is available.</p>
  </li>
</ul>

<p>Furthermore, the following general requirements must be met by the work
produced by this Working Group:</p>
<ul type="disc">
  <li>The products of the WebONT group should not presuppose any particular
    approach to either ontology design or ontology use. In addition, the
    language must support the development and linking of ontologies together,
    in a web-like manner.</li>
  <li>The products of this working group must be supported by a formal
    semantics allowing language designers, tool builders, and other "experts"
    to be able to precisely understand the meaning and "legal" inferences for
    expressions in the language.</li>
  <li>The language will use the XML syntax and datatypes wherever possible,
    and will be designed for maximum compatibility with XML and RDF language
    conventions.</li>
</ul>

<p>The Working Group shall start by evaluating the technical solutions
proposed in the DAML+OIL draft. If in this process the Working Group finds
solutions that are agreed to be improvements over solutions suggested by
DAML+OIL, those improved solutions should be used.</p>

<p>The Working Group will be chaired by <a
href="http://www.cs.umd.edu/~hendler/">Jim Hendler</a> (Univ of Maryland)
.</p>

<p>The remainder of this section describes the requirements and deliverables
in more detail.</p>

<h3 id="L513"><a name="L398">1.1 Web Ontology Language</a></h3>

<p>The term <i>ontology</i> has many meanings and shades of meaning. In the
contest of this work, we refer to what is sometimes called a "structural"
ontology -- a machine readable set of definitions that create a taxonomy of
classes and subclasses and relationships between them. The purpose of this WG
is <b>not</b> to define ontological knowledge in any or all domains (except
for example purposes). Rather, the goal is to define a machine-readable
markup language, based on current semantic web standards that will allow
adopters to define their own ontological content. This will allow the
interoperation of tools and techniques that manipulate the ontology language
for any set of content that users provide.</p>

<p>Recently, a number of research groups have been developing <a
href="http://www.daml.org/links">languages in which to express ontological
expressions on the web</a>. In an effort to bring these together, a number of
researchers, supported by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(<a href="http://www.darpa.mil/">DARPA</a>) released a draft language known
as the DARPA Agent Markup Language Ontology notations (<a
href="http://www.daml.org/2000/10/daml-ont.html">DAML-ONT</a>). Since then,
an ad hoc group of researchers has formed the <a
href="http://www.daml.org/committee/">Joint US/EU committee on Agent Markup
Languages</a> and released a new version of this language which merges DAML
with the Ontology Interface Layer (<a
href="http://www.ontoknowledge.org/oil/">OIL</a>) developed by European
researchers. The new language was released under the name <a
href="http://www.daml.org/2000/12/daml+oil-index.html">DAML+OIL</a>. This
language is based on the Resource Description Framework (<a
href="/RDF/">RDF</a>) and discussion of its features is conducted on <a
href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-logic/">www-ret-logic</a>,
an open mailing list. The <a href="http://www.daml.org/">DAML project</a>
includes details of the language and a repository of numerous ontologies and
annotated web pages.</p>

<p>The language they have defined, <a
href="http://www.daml.org/2001/03/daml+oil-index.html">DAML+OIL</a>, fits the
requirement specified above, and should be considered as a starting draft for
this particular WG product.</p>

<p>As well as the actual specification, the working group will produce
products necessary to support its use including: the specification, examples
of use, reference materials, and supporting documents with respect to the
formal semantics of the language.</p>

<h3 id="L535">1.2 General Requirements</h3>

<h4>1.2.1 Generality</h4>

<p>Within the communities of researchers working on the creation of the
semantic web, there are many different visions of what ontologies are and how
they can be used. This working group will strive to be as general as possible
in supporting multiple approaches and techniques. It should be noted,
however, that generality is not used here in the same sense as
"expressiveness" -- that is the ability to say more things does not
necessarily map to the ability to support many kinds of users. Trade-offs
between expressivity and compactness, computational complexity, and
simplicity of use will need to be made by the working group.</p>

<h4>1.2.2 Formal Semantics</h4>

<p>Moreso than for a traditional programming language, a knowledge
representation language needs a formal semantics to clearly delineate what
is, and is not, entailed from any particular language construct or
combination thereof. Such a formal semantics may be in a denotational or
axiomatic form. Examples of both of these have been produced for DAML+OIL,
providing examples of what is necessary for the WebONT language products.</p>

<h3 id="L550">1.3 Out of Scope</h3>

<p>The general area of semantic web technologies is very broad as it can
potentially include any controlled vocabulary for markup, or XML and/or RDF
metadata. Therefore, only those work items that we find absolutely essential
for a usable web ontology are listed in the proposed scope of the Working
Group.</p>

<p>This section describes out-of-scope work items. In general, the Working
Group will also consider items out of scope that are being addressed as part
of other W3C Activities, and it will reuse existing specifications wherever
possible. The co-chairs and editors of this working group will coordinate
with those of the <a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/#RDF-Core-WG">RDF Core
Working Group</a> to avoid duplicating work with respect to concrete data
types, schema definitions, and other products which may fall into those areas
where the RDF and Ontology Language layers come into contact. In addition,
the working group chairs will work with the W3C's Semantic Web Coordination
Group to help assure that work in this effort is compatible with other
ongoing semantic web development efforts wherever possible.</p>

<p>Also out of scope will be:</p>
<ul type="disc">
  <li><i>Query Rules and query langauges</i>
     A serious rule language that can be used for complex inferencing,
    exchange of proofs, and/or the querying of RDF or Web Ontology documents
    or repositories is desirable to the eventual development of the semantic
    web, but out of the scope of the current working group. However, this
    effort will coordinate with any rule or query working groups that may be
    constituted as part of the semantic web effort.</li>
  <li><i>Universal Web Logics</i>
     Much discussion on www-rdf-logic@w3.org has focused on a universal web
    logic (UWL) -- the possibility of creating a usable logic that can
    express any possible web content. There is discussion as to whether this
    is feasible (or even possible) and as to what features this language
    might have. The goal of this working group is explicitly not to define
    such a universal system, but rather a more limited system of immediate
    use to the web community. The current product may indeed provide a lower
    layer on which an eventual UWL can be built, but given the expressibility
    vs. use trade-offs mentioned above, is not expected to be able to
    directly result in such a logic.</li>
  <li><i>Agent Communication Languages</i>
     One use of web ontologies and logics is in support of agent-based
    computing. While the working group will provide products of use to such
    systems, the explicit design of agent infrastructure is not a working
    group goal. In particular, a number of Agent Communication Languages have
    been proposed, and sets of appropriate performatives discussed at great
    length. Such work is important to the world at large, but out of the
    scope of this working group.</li>
</ul>

<h2 id="L580"><a name="L880">2. Deliverables and Schedule</a></h2>

<p>These are subject to revision due to editorial needs and external
scheduling issues; updates will be negotiated with the related groups
and recorded on the <a href="./">WebONT Working Group home
page</a>. Meeting dates are mentioned here for planning purposes.</p>

<ul type="disc">
  <li>Nov 2001<br />
    Activity start and Working Group formation</li>
  <li>Jan 2002<br />
    Working Group face-to-face meeting</li>
  <li>March 2002<br />
    Publish initial working draft ontology Working Draft</li>
  <li>Apr 2002<br />
    Working Group face-to-face meeting</li>
  <li>Jul 2002<br />
    Working Group face-to-face meeting</li>
  <li>Oct 2002<br />
    Working Group face-to-face meeting</li>
  <li>Jan 2002<br />
    Working Group face-to-face meeting</li>
  <li>Feb 2003<br />
    Proposed Recommendation for ontology product</li>
  <li>March 2003<br />
    WG concludes</li>
</ul>

<p>The expected duration of the working group is about 1.5 years,
through March 2003.</p>

<p>Note that public working drafts will be made available at least once every
three months, per W3C Process.</p>

<h2 id="L637"><a name="L896">3. Relationship with Other Work</a></h2>

<h3 id="L639">3.1 W3C Activities</h3>

<p>XML and XML-derived activities, and now RDF activities, have become a
strategic technology in W3C and elsewhere. Each deliverable of any Working
Group must satisfy the dependencies from other W3C Working Groups before it
can advance to Candidate Recommendation.</p>

<p>At the current time, the primary dependency with other W3C work is with
the ongoing RDFSchema activity in the <a href="../RDFCore/">RDF Core working
group</a>. Coordination with this group is specified above, and will be
carried out as an ongoing activity as part of the W3C Semantic Web
Coordination Group.</p>

<p>The Working Group will also attempt to liaise via cross-participation with
a number of groups interested in service descriptions on the web. It is clear
that ontologies can play a role in such descriptions, and the potential
overlap between these activities is described on <a
href="http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/hendler/AgentWeb.html">a vision paper about
agents on the web.</a>. Some proposed ideas for the use of ontologies for
service langauges can be found at <a href="http://www.daml.org/services/">the
DAML Services description page</a>.</p>

<h3 id="L654">3.2 External Groups</h3>

<p>The Web Ontology Working Group will do its best to track work in as many
other groups that are doing related work as we can. Two groups that have
already been identified as doing work that relates to web ontology are:</p>
<ul type="disc">
  <li>FIPA <br />
    The Foundations for Intelligent Physical Agents (<a
    href="http://www.fipa.org/">FIPA</a>) is working on agent-communication
    languages. They have a subgroup beginning to look at representation
    languages for content in ACLs. We expect to liaise with this group and
    work towards interoperation of our approaches.</li>
  <li>The DARPA Agent Markup Language (<a
    href="http://www.daml.org/">DAML</a>) Initiative <br />
    The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is directly
    supporting the participation of researchers and others participating in
    the Semantic Web Activity. Liaison between these activities will be
    between the Director of the W3C and the Program Manager for DAML, or a
    specific designee of either of these parties.</li>
</ul>

<h2 id="L671"><a name="L906">4. Membership, Meetings, and Logistics</a></h2>

<p>To become a member of the Web Ontology Working Group, a representative of
a W3C Member organization must be nominated by their Advisory Committee
Representative (details on <a href="Overview.html#Membership">how to join</a>
are on the <a href="Overview.html">group home page</a>). The nomination must
include explicit agreement to this charter, including its goals, and the
level of effort required and an IPR disclosure.</p>

<p>Membership is also open to invited experts from the community, selected by
the chair or co-chair in order to balance the technical experience of the
group.</p>

<p>Participation is expected to consume at least one day per week of each
Working Group member's time.</p>

<h3 id="L679">4.1 Email Communication</h3>

<p>The mailing list for group communication is <a
href="mailto:www-webont-wg@w3.org">www-webont-wg@w3.org</a>. An <a
href="/Archives/Public/www-webont-wg/">archive of www-webont-wg</a> is
available to the public.</p>

<h3 id="L689">4.2 Group Home Page</h3>

<p>The Working Group will have a <a href="./">home page</a> that records the
history of the group, provides access to the archives, meeting minutes,
updated schedule of deliverables, membership list, and relevant documents and
resources. The page will be available to the public and will be maintained by
one of the co-chairs in collaboration with the W3C team contact.</p>

<h3 id="L693">4.3 Telephone Meetings</h3>

<p>The Working Group will hold teleconferences approximately weekly.
Participation in phone conferences is limited to members of the working
group. The Chair may, at his discretion, invite guest experts to attend
particular phone conferences. An IRC channel may be used to supplement
teleconferences.</p>

<p>Meeting records should be made available within two days of each telephone
meeting.</p>

<h3 id="L699">4.4 Face-to-Face Meetings</h3>

<p>Participation in face-to-face meetings is limited to working group members
and observers invited by the Chair. Observers may take part in
decision-making at the discretion of the Chair.</p>

<p>In addition to the required three annual face-to-face meetings, the
Working Group may schedule other face-to-face meetings in a manner that
maximizes co-location with events that Working Group members might be
attending anyway.</p>

<p>The Chair makes Working Group meeting dates and locations available to the
group at least eight weeks before the meeting, per W3C Process.</p>

<h2 id="L707"><a name="L5131">5 Resources</a></h2>

<p>To be successful, we expect the Working Group to have approximately 10 to
20 active principal members for its 18-month duration. We also expect a large
public review group that will participate in the mailing list discussions.</p>

<h3 id="L711">5.1 W3C Team Involvement</h3>

<p>The W3C Team expects to dedicate the services of one engineer,
1/3rd time, for the 1.5-year duration of the Working Group. Dan
Connolly is the W3C Team contact.</p>

<h2><a id="IPR1" name="L409">6. Intellectual Property</a></h2>

<p>W3C promotes an open working environment. Whenever possible,
technical decisions should be made unencumbered by intellectual
property right (IPR) claims.</p>

<p>This is a Royalty Free Working Group, as described in W3C's <a
href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/NOTE-patent-practice-20020124">Current
Patent Practice</a>, dated 24 January 2002.</p>

<p>Working Group participants disclose patent claims by sending email
to <tt>patent-issues@w3.org</tt>; please see <a
href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/NOTE-patent-practice-20020124">Current
Patent Practice</a> for more information about disclosures.
</p>

<hr />
<address>
  <p>status: complete. Dan Connolly, W3C Team Contact<br />
  <small>$Revision: 1.12 $ of $Date: 2003/08/20 11:56:57 $ by $Author:
  connolly $</small></p>

</address>

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