[SKOS] exactMatch issues: ISSUE-72 ISSUE-73 ISSUE-75

Issues 72, 73, 75
    http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/track/issues/72 - ExactMatchTransitive
    http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/track/issues/73 - ExactMatchDisjoints
    http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/track/issues/75 - ExactMatchInclusions

Some thoughts on these issues...

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Issue 72 asks, is skos:exactMatch normatively transitive?

N.B. we have no use cases which require this to be so. I haven't spent a lot
of time exploring the consequences of inferring the transitive closure of
skos:exactMatch across two or more mappings, so I'm reluctant to include
this in the data model. I would prefer to leave this open for applications
to explore the options.

PROPOSED: That the SKOS reference make no formal statement about the
transitivity if skos:exactMatch. 

I.e. we leave it open. 

If needed, we could add a note to the SKOS reference recognising that this
might be a useful inference pattern in some situations, but is left up to
the application whether to treat it as transitive or not, mainly because of
lack of experience with making inferences across two or more mappings.

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Issue 73 asks, is skos:exactMatch disjoint with any other properties?

I think that an exact match link is asserting something fundamentally
different from a hierarchical or associative link. 

PROPOSED: That skos:exactMatch is disjoint with each of
skos:broaderTransitive and skos:related.

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Issue 75 asks, are there any property chains involving skos:exactMatch we
could usefully include in the SKOS data model?

Again, we have no requirement for this.

I suggest we leave this open too, because of lack of experience or
requirement. I haven't spent much time thinking through the consequences of
any such property chains, so I'm reluctant to state any normatively in the
data model. However I'm happy to add notes to the Reference discussing these
as potentially useful inference patterns, which can be explored in
applications.

PROPOSED: There are no property chain axioms in the SKOS data model
involving skos:exactMatch

--
Cheers,

Al. 

--
Alistair Miles
Senior Computing Officer
Image Bioinformatics Research Group
Department of Zoology
The Tinbergen Building
University of Oxford
South Parks Road
Oxford
OX1 3PS
United Kingdom
Web: http://purl.org/net/aliman
Email: alistair.miles@zoo.ox.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)1865 281993

Received on Tuesday, 24 June 2008 16:10:40 UTC