[Ontology] Genericity vs Specifity

Hi,

In this version of the ontology I'm introducing some generic properties that can enable the extensibility of the ontology. Let me explain

For example, now the ontology has the properties 'battery', 'camera', 'display'. These properties can be generalized defining a property named 'component'. And battery, camera, etc will be just subproperties of this property. The same occurs with the 'supportedXXX', preferredXXX,  defaultXXX, or activeXX properties, which can be generalized as a generic 'supports', 'prefers', 'defaults', 'active' property, and having the specific XXX properties as a subproperties of such generic properties.
Following this approach the ontology can be easily extended with new components, etc not previously considered. So this is for sure the path to follow.

However, now the question arises, does the ontology needs to capture the specific subproperties or just be as generic as possible and only capture the generic properties, letting specific vocabularies to create the more concrete properties?

For example, does the ontology needs to define an specific 'supportedImageFormats', 'supportedVideoFormats', 'supportedAudioFormats' property or just only a generic property called 'supportedFormats', and let specific vocabularies to deal with specific properties as the DDR Core Vocabulary does

What do you think?

Best Regards

Received on Friday, 5 December 2008 08:42:17 UTC