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  <title>DAML-ONT and OIL</title>
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<p><a href="http://www.daml.org/">DAML</a></p>

<h1>DAML-ONT and OIL</h1>
<address>
  <p>Status: initial listing of some related OIL documents in progress<br />
  <br />
  Feedback to <a
  href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-logic/">www-rdf-logic</a>,
  please.<br />
  <br />
  <a href="http://www.ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm/">Deborah McGuinness</a>, editor<br />
  <small>$Revision: 1.1 $ of $Date: 2000/10/19 03:43:57 $ </a></small></p>

</address>

<p>This page attempts to provide information concerning OIL-
The Ontology
Inference Layer - from the perspective of a reader interested in DAML and
its evolution.
There is an active discussion going on the www-rdf-logic mailing list
concerning the evolution of the DAML ontology language and
its relations to OIL, thus it may be useful to read
some background information.
</p>
<p>
OIL is a language built on a long history of research
in <a href="http://dl.kr.org/">description logics</a>.
Description Logic is a subfield of knowledge representation
and as such aims to provide a vehicle for expressing structured information
and for reasoning with the information in a principled manner.
Description logics may be viewed as providing a formal foundation for
frame-based systems, object-oriented representations, semantic data models,
and type systems.
<a href="http://www.ontoknowledge.org/oil/">OIL</a> is an effort to
produce a well defined language for integrating ontologies
with web standards (in particular RDF/RDFS and XML/XMLS).  
It is a web-based representation and
inference layer for ontologies using the constructs found in many frame
languages and reasoning and formal semantics in description
logics.  

</p>

<p>There is a main <a href="http://www.ontoknowledge.org/oil/">
OIL site</a> which contains a number of documents of interest.
Perhaps the most interesting documents are the:
<ul>
<li>
<a href="http://www.ontoknowledge.org/oil/downl/dialects.pdf"> 
white paper</a> that is aimed as a gentle introduction.  It is meant for 
casual readers and those interested in an informal introduction.
This is entitled:  
An informal description of OIL-Core and Standard OIL:
A layered proposal for DAML-O.
Authors: Jeen Broekstra,
Stefan Decker,
Michael Erdmann,
Dieter Fensel,
Carole Goble,
Frank van Harmelen,
Ian Horrocks,
Michel Klein,
Deborah McGuinness,
Enrico Motta,
Peter Patel-Schneider,
Steffen Staab,
and
Rudi Studer.
<li>
<a href="http://www.ontoknowledge.org/oil/syntax/">
syntax</a> specification.  This provides a BNF notation for the terms.
It is meant for readers interested in the full specification.
Authors: 
Frank van Harmelen, 
Ian Horrocks, and
Michel Klein 
<li>
semantics specification:
<a href="http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~horrocks/OIL/Semantics/">
html version</a>,
<a href="http://www.ontoknowledge.org/oil/down/semantics.pdf/">
pdf version</a>.
This provides a formal specification and semantics for OIL.  It is a 
model-theoretic specification for the meaning of the OIL
constructs and specifies the inference implications of the statements.
This is meant for serious readers.
Author: Ian Horrocks.
</ul>
</p>

<p></p>

There will be another document posted soon providing a mapping
between OIL and DAML-ONT.
Currently there are discussions concerning the differences between OIL
and DAML-ONT.  See, for example, the 
<a href=
"http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-logic/2000Oct/0036.html">
thread</a> on the RDF-logic mailing list.

<p></p>
<hr />
<br />
<br />


<h2>Acknowledgements</h2>

<p>This collection pulls together an incomplete list of pointers to
many other people's work.  It draws heavily on a long history (over 20 years)
of work in description logics.  Most recently it leans on
work done by the authors of OIL:
Jeen Broekstra,
Stefan Decker,
Michael Erdmann,
Dieter Fensel,
Carole Goble,
Frank van Harmelen,
Ian Horrocks,
Michel Klein,
Deborah McGuinness,
Enrico Motta,
Peter Patel-Schneider,
Steffen Staab,
and
Rudi Studer.

</p>
<hr />
<br />
<br />


<h2><a id="Notes" name="Notes"></a>Notes</h2>


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