Re: less-restrictive range and domain terms

Hi Peter,

Peter F. Patel-Schneider writes:
 > >  > "There exist triples with property P and an object of class foo," rather
 > >  > than "All triples with property P have objects of class foo," is a
 > >  > useful interpretation, I presume.
 > >  > 
 > > 
 > > Yep - that's what I meant. Sorry for not being clear.
 > > 
 > But suppose that there just doesn't happen to be such a relationship in the
 > current world.  What happens then?
 > 
 > This is not such a problem for property ranges (but does cause problems
 > even here), but what about an OWL construct like 
 >      the class foo may have range bar for property p
 > Does this mean that foo has to be non-empty?
 > 

I'm not very well equipped educationally to deal with this sort of
question, but I would imagine that in order to have the utility I was
after the semantics of the above would need to be something like:

"there exists a triple with subject of type foo, property p and
object of type bar."

I think that would imply that foo is indeed non-empty.

Cheers,

Phil

Received on Tuesday, 4 May 2004 17:18:44 UTC