Hi all,

- I think NM-WG already proposed a data model in UML (In its first GFD document). So, may be NML can propose a UML version for simplifying the discussion between
the two groups as suggested by John.

I definitely agree that something like UML for the generic data

model, independent of the actual schema, is the best way forward.

- RDF is the best choice for letting different communities develop their own ontologies and make them interoperable. I think it is a very good choice made by the NML group.

Just to make it clear, we have not agreed within the NML-WG that

we will exclusively use RDF. In fact, my understanding was that

we agreed to define an ontology and describe how it would be

rendered into the existing styles of NDL and NM-WG. As John

points out, UML would be a good way forward here.

So we mainly need to aggree within NML-WG for the ontology we need in the considered context.

I fully agree with this. We need to consider the ontology

first. We've had this issue before with LDAP vs XML and

I think that we we learned is that this tends to sort itself out

naturally. (Hint: we'll be using OWL in 2 years... :-)

best,

martin