- From: Xiaoshu Wang <wangxiao@MUSC.EDU>
- Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:06:31 -0400
- To: Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>
- CC: Bijan Parsia <bparsia@cs.man.ac.uk>, Jeremy Carroll <jjc@hpl.hp.com>, public-owl-dev@w3.org, Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>, Alistair Miles <a.j.miles@rl.ac.uk>
Alan Ruttenberg wrote: > This is more complicated than I can easily follow for the moment. In > case it is helpful, here's an example of something I was thinking of: > > Define: rdfs:imports as new ontology property. This is an instruction > to rdfs tools that they should include the file specified by the > property, and that owl reasoners should *not*. Consider the following > case I suggested in the context of SKOS in some earlier > correspondence. The idea would be that the extra triple > "annotationSubPropertyOf a subproperty of subproperty" would be in a > separate file, say "rdf-extras.rdf", and the test.rdf below would be > amended so that it contains > > <owl:Ontology rdf:about="#"><rdfs:imports > resource="rdfs-extras.rdf"/></owl:Ontology> I think RDF has a different "import/include" model than the OWL has in mind. I guess RDF people thought of a "follow your nose" kind of model. In other words, if a URI is mentioned in an RDF document, all RDF triples resided in the mentioned URI should be included in the RDF model. If you cannot find a triple to mention the URIs you would liked to "import/include", then you use rdfs:isDefinedBy. This is what I guessed, because there is no official documentation about it. On the other hand, OWL does not take the "follow your nose" model. Hence, it then created a tag of owl:imports. This seems creating a confusion, at least to me. First, what if a URI is mentioned but its ontology is not imported? Second, the domain of owl:imports is constrained to be owl:Ontology only. Since OWL is considered a vocabulary extension of RDF, and if we take the "follow your nose" approach and accept the "rdfs:isDefinedBy", I am not sure if the owl:imports is any useful. The problem, I think, is to have a clearly defined processing specification about the treatment of URI is an RDF model. If you need "to/or not to follow the nose" and when. Without such a clarification, adding new term will only create more confusion. That's my cents. Xiaoshu
Received on Wednesday, 18 April 2007 20:09:59 UTC