- From: Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk>
- Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 13:23:14 +0100
- To: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Cc: public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org
>>>>> "PH" == Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us> writes: CM> In all the examples given, the "lifted"[*] n-ary relation was CM> never truly a relation in the first place and always better CM> modeled as a class. It's kind of cheating. >> >> Well, it is kind of cheating, yes, although if it works... PH> No, really, its not cheating. This reduction of n-ary relations PH> to binary+unary relations is quite general and quite sound, and PH> has been known and thoroughly understood for over a century. It PH> can always be done, and it often makes perfectly good intuitive PH> sense. No, Chris is right. It's cheating. I have to decide before starting which of my relations are n-ary and which are not. Moving between the two is not necessarily a trivial thing to do. And having some relations being relations and some being classes is less than clear. >> Well, this I would agree with. Folding design patterns in, would >> be nice. PH> Agreed. We made this a central feature of our COE graphic OWL PH> editor, in that a user can design a 'template' (a chunk of OWL PH> with gaps in it) and give it a name, then just drag-and-drop one PH> into a new OWL concept map and fill in the missing PH> parameters. Its a simple device and not perfect, but it does PH> seem to be useful. Yes. Protege does a similar thing. I'd like to see this at a language level. Phil
Received on Tuesday, 22 May 2007 12:23:55 UTC