Time Ontology in OWL Draft Published

The Spatial Data on the Web Working Group, a joint endeavor by W3C and OGC, has published an updated version of the Time Ontology in OWL, first published by the Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group in September 2006. The ontology has been in widespread use since that time despite two particular problems: the uncertain status of the work and its lack of support for calendar systems other than the Gregorian calendar. The SDW WG is addressing the first issue by taking the specification through the full standards process of both W3C and OGC. The second problem is fully resolved in the new draft, so that the Time Ontology is able to support any Temporal Reference System. Further requirements identified by the WG are also being addressed.