Re: [ALL] editors draft of simple part-whole note ready for review

Guus,

I am attaching the document with the updates based on your comments. 
Again, it is the whole part-whole document, but the only  thing that 
changed is the first pattern.

> [[
>  1. Define a property hasPart.
> ]]
>
> Earlier in the document we suggest to prefer partOf over hasPart, so I 
> suggest we use partOf here, unless there is a good reason to use 
> hasPart (and then we should mention this explicitly).

Good point -- fixed

> [[
>  2. If we are using OWL (and not RDF Schema),  ......
> ]]
>
> If you use OWL, you're also using RDF Schema (either completely (Full) 
> or with restrictions (DL)). I suggest to delete the text between the 
> parentheses.

I changed that text to reflect the next point

> [[
>  3 Define domain and range for the property hasPart (i.e., a class 
> Item)
> ]]
>
> I've become convinced that domain and range should be almost obsolete 
> in ontologies, It restricts reuse of c.q. mapping to a similar 
> property in another ontology. I prefer using the OWL local range 
> restrictions, as their ontological commitment is a lot less. In this 
> case it would mean defining two OWL allValuesFrom restrictions on 
> class Item: one for the partOf and one for the hasPart property. Of 
> course, this approach is more complicated for people to use and it 
> also requires the use of OWL. We could mark this as a choice people 
> can make: the might want to use domain and range, but should be aware 
> of the consequences (and that there is an alternative).

We discussed this at the OEP telecon and decided to put two variants 
in: one for those using RDFS and one for those using OWL. The text is 
changed correspondingly. If you see something there that doesn't quite 
look right, please let me know, or just edit it yourself.

> Also, I think the name of the class Item is too genera, the name might 
> suggest to the ontology user that "Item" is more general than 
> intended. I would prefer CarPart here, which seems to be the natural 
> term.  It assumes the partOf property is reflexive, but we may skip 
> over this issue and refer to later in the document.

I agree, although this is more problematic for domain and range. I 
changed it here because it is probably no less problematic than Item 
anyway, but the comment pertains to the rest of the document as well, I 
think.

Natasha

Received on Saturday, 16 April 2005 00:30:03 UTC