Does DAML-ONT extend RDFS?

We need to be clear on how seriously DAML-ONT takes the idea of
extending RDFS. Referring again to OIL, one of the guiding principals
in the design was that as much as possible of a given ontology should
be understood by an RDFS agent. This is why OIL class "definitions"
are the way they are - they are designed so that an assertion of the
form "x = a1 AND ... AND an", which is a VERY common idiom in
ontologies, can at least be interpreted by RDFS agents as meaning "x
subClassOf a1" AND ... AND "x subClassOf an". This does not seem to
have been given much consideration in the RDFS serialisation of
DAML-ONT.

Ian
--
Ian Horrocks, Department of Computer Science,
University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK.
Tel: +44 161 275 6133  Fax: +44 161 275 6204  Email: horrocks@cs.man.ac.uk
URL: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~horrocks

Received on Monday, 16 October 2000 09:07:43 UTC