The POWDER Working Group is specifying a protocol for publishing descriptions of (e.g. metadata about) Web resources using RDF, OWL, and HTTP.

Charter and History

The POWDER Working Group Charter shows what the W3C has asked this working group to do.

POWDER Working Group

The POWDER Working Group (member only link) is open to W3C members and invited experts. The working group meets weekly by phone. Face-to-face meetings are held up to four times per year.

Publications

POWDER: Description Resources

W3C Last Call Working Draft, 14 November 2008

POWDER: Grouping of Resources

W3C Last Call Working Draft, 14 November 2008

POWDER: Formal Semantics

W3C Last Call Working Draft, 14 November 2008

POWDER: Primer

W3C Last Call Working Draft, 14 November 2008

POWDER: Test Suite

W3C Last Call Working Draft, 15 August 2008

POWDER: Use Cases and Requirements

W3C Working Group Note, 31 October 2007

POWDER: POWDER-S Vocabulary (WDRS)

Namespace document 11 November 2008

XML Schema for POWDER and POWDER-BASE

This is the namespace document/schema for POWDER. The namespace URI (http://www.w3.org/2007/05/powder) is dereferenced to a schema at http://www.w3.org/2007/05/powder/wdr.xsd which in turn imports two others at http://www.w3.org/2007/05/powder/wdrb-p.xsd and http://www.w3.org/2007/05/powder/wdrb-c.xsd

Obsolete documents

POWDER: Web Description Resources (WDR) Vocabulary

W3C First Public Working Draft, 25 September 2007. This document was made obsolete by the development of the POWDER XML Schema.

POWDER: Web Description Resources Datatypes (WDRD)

W3C Working Draft Draft 25 September 2007. This document was made obsolete by the development of the POWDER XML Schema.

Tools

POWDER Validator

This tool is almost complete at its temporary location and likely to move to validator.w3.org soon

POWDER Processor

This tool still has a 'To Do' list attached but implements most of the features of a POWDER Processor defined the Description Resources document. It uses some of the code from the validator, makes use of a MySQL database, and is written in Perl.

@@@ REF POWDER Processor

Available very soon. This processor is written in PHP.

TransOnto, a Semantic POWDER Processor

A knowledge transformation and migration system for transferring knowledge between semantic representations that acts as a POWDER-S processor. It uses Jena and Pellet and offers a command line interface.

POWDER to POWDER-BASE transformation tool

This uses a subset of the validator to validate a POWDER document and return a POWDER-BASE transformation of it. The script is documented on the validator page.

POWDER to POWDER-BASE XSLT

Uses XSLT 2 to transform any POWDER document to the equivalent POWDER-BASE document.

POWDER-BASE to POWDER-S XSLT

Uses only XSLT 1 to transform POWDER-BASE to POWDER-S

POWDER Grouping Tester

A tool to help develop and test POWDER IRI sets.

Members

The following W3C Member organizations have appointed participants to this Working Group (details are Member-only):

• AOL
• Deutsche Telekom AG, T-Com
• FOSI (until November 2008)
• Fundación ONCE
• Institute of Informatics & Telecommunications (IIT), NCSR
• National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
• Opera Software
• Segala (until October 2008)
• Vodafone

Joining the POWDER Working Group

If your organization is already a member of W3C, ask your W3C Advisory Committee Representative to appoint you using the join/leave Web forms. This will also automatically subscribe you to the WG mailing list.

More information about the W3C is available as is information about joining W3C.

Mailing Lists & Blogs

• Mailing list archives:
  • public-powderwg (technical discussion),
  • member-powderwg (administrative, Member-only)
• Our POWDER blog, updated weekly (RSS feed)

Relationship with Other W3C Work

Mobile Web Best Practices

The development of the mobileOK trustmark is an important use case and test case for description resources.

Rule Interchange Format

POWDER has an inherent need for rules to define the scope of a description and for when one description should be used in preference to another. Furthermore, some applications will store user preferences as rules and it it will be beneficial to be able to copy these user preferences between clients. Cooperation and discussion with RIF is therefore important.

Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

The POWDER Working Group seeks close cooperation with WAI on the labelling of resources that meet WCAG guidelines and with the ERT WG on integration with EARL.

Technical Architecture Group

TAG has published a number of relevant findings and POWDER will need to ensure conformance with these. For example the April 2006 finding on Authoritative Metadata.

Semantic Web Deployment Working Group

POWDER will need to draw on this group's expertise and guidance, particularly in relation to the applications of POWDER deliverables outside Description Resources.

Ubiquitous Web Applications Working Group

There may be features in common between the protocol for accessing description resources developed by POWDER and a protocol useful for CC/PP. The POWDER Working Group should track future work on a protocol for CC/PP in the Ubiquitous Web Applications Working Group (successor to the Device Independence Working Group) and identify any such opportunities for common features.

XML Activity

POWDER will need to explore non-Semantic Web technologies as alternative approaches to meeting its aims. In particular input will be sought from the XML Query (XQuery) group on the resource grouping Recommendation.