- From: Toby Inkster <tai@g5n.co.uk>
- Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 10:59:22 +0100
- To: Bernard Vatant <bernard.vatant@mondeca.com>
- Cc: ontolog-forum@ontolog.cim3.net, semantic-web@w3.org
On 8 Sep 2009, at 10:03, Bernard Vatant wrote: > - Are such constructions valid in RDFS and/or OWL? > - Are they useful? I think they're valid, but I don't think they're especially useful. Given: dcterms:subject rdfs:range _:b . skos:Concept rdfs:subClassOf _:b . foaf:Person rdfs:subClassOf _:b . <doc> dcterms:subject <#thing> . what useful conclusions can a reasoner come to? It can't conclude that <#thing> is a foaf:Person; it can't conclude that <#thing> is a skos:Concept; in fact, <#thing> might be neither of those - it could be anything. A related OWL construct is: ex:subject rdfs:range _:b . _b: owl:unionOf ( skos:Concept foaf:Person ) . Where the reasoner could at least conclude that if <doc> ex:subject <#thing> then <#thing> must be either a skos:Concept or a foaf:Person or both. This is more useful for reasoning with, because combined with a few other inferences it could narrow down <#thing>'s class. OK, given that your original example is not much use to automated reasoners, could it at least be helpful to humans reading the schema? Yes, perhaps, but it's likely they'd be served better by text written in natural language - a rdfs:comment, skos:note, etc. -- Toby A Inkster <mailto:mail@tobyinkster.co.uk> <http://tobyinkster.co.uk>
Received on Tuesday, 8 September 2009 10:00:00 UTC