Re: comments on RDF mapping

On Oct 30, 2007, at 10:27 AM, Jeremy Carroll wrote:

> Alan Ruttenberg wrote:
>> My understanding is that there is a requirement to be able to  
>> create properties attached to classes that have more inference  
>> support than is currently possible using annotation properties.  
>> For example, it is desirable that an "annotation property" for an  
>> editing time stamp should have a range that is xsd:date, or, for  
>> SKOS, we would like  to be create subproperties of rdfs:label.
>> Alan Rector articulated these cases initially, IIRC. I suspect  
>> they are recorded somewhere amongst  the OWLED stuff.
>
>
> If I have understood correctly, these requirements are about  
> annotation properties, in particular in the way they interact with  
> tools such as editors.

In this illustration it is about a tool, but I don't think that is a  
restrictions. Also, I didn't consider them to be requirements on  
annotation properties. That only relation to annotation properties is  
historical - previously using annotation properties in these cases  
was the best we could do.

The only unique aspect of annotation properties (or annotations) that  
remain in 1.1 is that they can have values which are a mixed set of  
objects and data values. I  suspect there is use for this feature,  
but I have seen much more call for the ability to have sub/super  
properties and domain/range in these cases.

> It is clearly helpful for editors if they know what sort of values  
> an annotation property may have, and whether or not an annotation  
> property is intended as a label.

Not just editors. Standards. Like SKOS.

> For maximal interop with RDFS, using the RDFS methodology (i.e.  
> rdfs:range, and rdfs:label) is good.
+1

> My understanding (or perhaps misunderstanding) is that there is no  
> theoretical problem with extending the annotation semantics to  
> include such parts of RDFS. I (mis)understand that it is more a  
> preference by the DL implementors, and/or editors of the semantics  
> to not give annotations any semantics at all.

That is not my understanding. It is my understanding that the punning  
mechanism is exactly the result of the DL implementors trying to  
address these issues. Perhaps Bijan, Boris, Dmitry, might chip in and  
confirm or disavow this.

> Note this use case seems to only be about punning annotation  
> properties with data properties.

Only taken literally. See [1] , which I proposed for OBI [2] for a  
more fleshed out example.

[1] http://esw.w3.org/topic/OBI_Definition_Source
[2] http://obi.sourceforge.net/

-Alan

Received on Wednesday, 31 October 2007 00:20:37 UTC