Re: owl:sameAs temptation

Hi Sarven

You might be interested by the way I've mapped the Geonames feature codes,
which are modelled as instances of a subclass of skos:Concept (hence OWL
individuals) to equivalent classes in other ontologies. See [1] and [2].

The rationale is that most of the time when you assert that a owl:Thing T
is "equivalent to" some owl:Class C, it means that being of rdf:type C is
equivalent to have T as a value of some "typing" property. For example
being an instance of the class "BlueThing" is equivalent to having "Blue"
as value of some "hasColor" property. This can be modelled as in [2] using
a owl:hasValue" restriction, avoiding the owl:sameAs temptation and keep
all your ontology in safe OWL-DL land, this way :

<owl:Class rdf:about="http://example.org/BlueThing">
      <rdfs:label xml:lang="en">Blue Thing</rdfs:label>
      <owl:equivalentClass>
            <owl:Restriction>
                  <owl:onProperty
rdf:resource="http://example.org/hasColor"/>

                  <owl:hasValue rdf:resource="http://example.org/Blue"/>
            </owl:Restriction>
      </owl:equivalentClass>
</owl:Class>

<skos:Concept rdf:about="http://example.org/Blue">
      <skos:prefLabel xml:lang="en">Blue</skos:prefLabel>
      <skos:prefLabel xml:lang="fr">Bleu</skos:prefLabel>
</skos:Concept>

Hope this helps

Bernard

[1] http://www.geonames.org/ontology/ontology_v3.01.rdf
[2] http://www.geonames.org/ontology/mappings_v3.01.rdf


Le 7 mars 2012 07:43, Sarven Capadisli <info@csarven.ca> a écrit :

> Hi,
>
> I'm sure this is talked somewhere, I'd love a pointer if you know any:
>
> I often see resources of type owl:Class get paired with resources of type
> owl:Thing using owl:sameAs. As far as I understand, this is incorrect since
> domain and range of owl:sameAs should be owl:Thing.
>
> I'm tempted to change my resource that is a skos:Concept
> skos:exactMatch'ed with a resource of type owl:Thing, and use owl:sameAs.
> Sort of like "everyone else is doing it, it should be okay", and "don't
> need to fear the thought police".
>
> However, I don't wish to do that with a clear conscience, hence, I'd
> appreciate it if anyone can shed some light here for me and help me
> understand to make an informed decision based on reason (no pun intended).
>
> Related to this, I was wondering whether it makes sense to claim a
> resource to be of type owl:Class as well as of type owl:Thing, where may be
> appropriate, or one could get away with it e.g., a country. If this is
> okay, I imagine it is okay to use owl:sameAs for the subject at hand and
> point to yet another thing.
>
> Thanks all.
>
> -Sarven
>
>


-- 
*Bernard Vatant
*
Vocabularies & Data Engineering
Tel :  + 33 (0)9 71 48 84 59
Skype : bernard.vatant
Linked Open Vocabularies <http://labs.mondeca.com/dataset/lov>

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