The rdf-interest mailing list was the venue for the announcements of the XoTCL RDF parser update, a new ontology editor and a universal learning format

XoTCL RDF Parser

The updated XoTCL RDF parser is part of the 0.83 version of the XoTCL project. Gustaf Neumann described the aim of the new implementation is to:

is to provide a very flexible means for integration in different contexts through the use of high level object oriented concepts such as design patterns. The new version of the parser is much more complete (we have a growing list of test exercises in our regression test) and is much faster.

OilEd Ontology Editor

A new ontology editor named OilEd developed by Sean Bechhofer at the University of Manchester has been made available as freeware (registration required). OilEd allows the user to:

• build ontologies;
• use the FaCT reasoner to check the consistency of ontologies and add implicit subClassOf relations;
• export ontologies in a number of formats including both OIL-RDF and DAML-RDF.

Ian Horrocks described OilEd as a:

simple, freeware editor that demonstrates the use of, and stimulates interest in, OIL. OilEd is not intended as a full ontology development environment - it will not actively support the development of large-scale ontologies, the migration and integration of ontologies, versioning, argumentation and many other activities that are involved in ontology construction. Rather, it is the "NotePad" of ontology editors, offering just enough functionality to allow users to build ontologies and to demonstrate how the FaCT reasoner can be used to check and enrich ontologies.

Saba Universal Learning Format

Saba software has developed the Universal Learning Format (ULF) which includes the Catalog Format, which is an RDF mapping of IEEE LOM, augmented with additional catalog and eCommerce information.