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Subject: RE: [uddi-spec] Comments on UDDI Taxonomy Representation Requirements
John, Following this stuff on email makes my head spin. I'm curious, based on your assessment below, would there be any problems with supporting an Ontology definition, OWL for example, on a tModel and then referencing a particular class within that OWL definition as part of a keyedReference? For example, you could define that a businessEntity references the class of businesses known as Wholesalers, where Wholesalers is defined as a class in an OWL ontology. To me, this just seems like an extension of the current environment that facilitates more informational querying rather than flat categories that are available today. For example, Retail Outlet may be derived from Wholesaler and therefore, it would respond positively to a query for Wholesalers. Let me know if I'm totally lost on this point. JP -----Original Message----- From: John Colgrave [mailto:colgrave@hursley.ibm.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2004 9:33 AM To: uddi-spec@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: [uddi-spec] Comments on UDDI Taxonomy Representation Requirements I have not yet seen the REQ-028 document so these comments are based on the minutes from the FTF and subsequent discussions. I think we should clearly separate the taxonomy from the UDDI metadata about the taxonomy. This will aid in using a standard representation/language to express the taxonomy, and in using taxonomies that were created without UDDI in mind. I think we should use a (subset of a) standard representation/language rather than inventing our own schema. This will aid in using tools and other infrastructure that can be expected around a standard, and in using taxonomies that were created without UDDI in mind. I think we should not impose the restriction of a single explicit root. I see no reason for this restriction and I think it will require unnecessary work to use taxonomies with UDDI. If someone produces an OWL version of UNSPSC for example then it will probably not have a single root, as UNSPSC does not, and so we would not be able to use that as the representation of UNSPSC that was used by/with UDDI. Leaving aside the question of equivalence, and other requirements relating to REQ-029, I think the requirements for a representation/language for simple taxonomies within UDDI are the following: 1) Each node is uniquely identified by a string that can be used as a keyValue in a keyedReference. 2) Each node can have one or more descriptions associated with it. 3) Each node may have a single parent node. A node without a parent node is a root node. Multiple root nodes are possible. Note that only the first of these is necessary as far as the UDDI API is concerned. The other requirements are to help a GUI to display the taxonomy as a tree, or set of trees, and to aid the user in choosing the appropriate value(s). Do we need to be able to indicate whether a particular node identifier can be used as a valid keyValue? I have not come across this idea of valid and invalid nodes in the general taxonomy literature so this may be a UDDI-specific thing. Turning to the question of the UDDI metadata about a taxonomy, I don't see anything about that in the FTF minutes, but looking at Luc's example, and the various proprietary schemes that have been developed, the metadata about a taxonomy is the following: 1) one or more names 2) one or more descriptions 3) information about the UDDI tModel that represents the taxonomy, either just the key or a full tModel. Are the names really necessary? Looking ahead to a proposal, an obvious one is to use the existing tModel element where the name is the URI of the taxonomy, and descriptions of the taxonomy are mapped to the descriptions of the tModel. The tModelKey attribute obviously holds the key of the tModel. The overviewDoc of the tModel points to the location of the taxonomy. As much or as little of the other content of a tModel element can be used as required. John Colgrave IBM To unsubscribe from this mailing list (and be removed from the roster of the OASIS TC), go to http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/uddi-spec/members/leave_workgro up.php.
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