Introduction

AtomOwl is a project to create an official ontology for the atom syndication format.

The latest version is http://bblfish.net/work/atom-owl/2006-06-06/. It is being worked on in the Sommer subversion repository.

History

1. This work started off when I discovered Danny Ayer's initial Atom-OWL model while searching for Atom information on the web. At the time I had no idea who Danny was, and I had a very tenuous grasp on the Semantic Web and OWL. This was around May 2004.
2. 2004-06-22/: This directory contains the first atom ontology which I explained in a blog like manner. This blog shows how I started off thinking that an Atom Feed was a subclass of an Atom entry, and how I slowly moved against thinking of it that way.
3. 2004-08-12/: This directory contains the second atom ontology which I also tried to clarify why I thought that thinking of a feed as a subclass of an entry was not a good idea, and how one could integrate foaf and atom. Again I tried to explain my thinking in a blog format. The directory contains some of my thinking on how to model a blog in n3.
4. 2004-11-09/: This directory contains the third Atom ontology. I did not add an explanation for it, and as a consequence I can't quite remember what I was aiming at. But I am pretty sure that this led be me to the next ontology. This ontology does have a nice html presentation though.
5. I presented an Atom ontology on the Atom-wiki, which tried to emulate as closely as possible the then draft atom syntax. The hope was to see if one could adapt atom so that one could construe Atom as RDF. As opposed to the previous examples where I was aiming at working towards what I thought would be the best model, I here tried to work towards the model that would most closely follow the atom syntax, so that perhaps minimal changes to the atom syntax would allow it to be seen as RDF, and so allow all the nice RDF extension mechanisms to fall into place. Sadly there was just too much resistance on the atom mailing list to such an idea, and I just did not have enought time to defend it.
6. 2005-10-23: The Atom Syntax has been finalised. I am now working on a final Atom ontology that will be faithful to the vocabulary used in the syntax, so we will be able to propose to the w3c as the official atom ontology. I have been working together with Danny Ayers and Reto on this. This is looking very promising.