Datatype Defaulting in OWL

Is there a way to express, in an ontology, that a property's range is
in a particular datatype even if the datatype isn't present in the
instance?

In other words, say I have a property called :numberOfFish, and in one
instance I have:

:John :numberOfFish "5" .

and in another:

:Mary :numberOfFish "15"^^xsd:integer .

In the schema I want to make it clear that lexical values must be
taken from xsd:integer but that you're free to omit the datatype
declaration in the instance and can consider it to be regarded an
xsd:integer anyway. So the first triple should entail :John
:numberOfFish "5"^^xsd:integer.

This has come up in FOAF before, which demurs from using datatypes
before this opt/man issue is sorted out, and it's come up in my own
current meteorological ontology.

(CCing www-rdf-logic to help reach the right audience, even though
it's traditionally used only for CFP spam.)

-- 
Sean B. Palmer, http://inamidst.com/sbp/

Received on Thursday, 22 November 2007 08:27:33 UTC