- From: Guus Schreiber <schreiber@cs.vu.nl>
- Date: Thu, 06 May 2004 22:42:37 +0200
- To: Jeremy Carroll <jjc@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
- Cc: Natasha Noy <noy@SMI.Stanford.EDU>, swbp <public-swbp-wg@w3.org>, Alan Rector <rector@cs.man.ac.uk>
Jeremy Carroll wrote: > > Natasha Noy wrote: > >> >> >> People seem to have agreed that doing a pattern on n-ary (reified) >> relations would be a useful thing to have. Alan Rector and I actually >> had a chance to work it out and you can see the first draft of our >> effort at >> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2004May/att-0003/n- >> aryRelations.html >> >> It's nowhere near as complicated or as controversial (we hope) as the >> Classes as Values one. In fact, it's rather simple, almost too simple >> to be a pattern. > > > Simple design patterns are better than complicated ones. I think this > looks useful. > >> On the other hand, it seems to be on a topic that many newcomers to >> OWL have questions on. >> >> As usual, please feel free to poke holes in it and all feedback is >> welcome. >> > > Two comments: > > 1) I think it would be worth showing this design pattern also just with > RDFS, and hence broadening the scope of this note to > [[ > In OWL *and RDF*, a property is a binary relation: it links two > individuals or an individual and a value. How do we represent relations > among more than two individuals? > ]] > (basically this would use global range and domain constraints to achieve > some of the effect) > > 2) I winced somewhat at the use of the words "reify" and "reified" > RDF reification is, to me at least, a bit of a mess, and use of these > words will make the RDF literate reader think of RDF reification. I > realise that the use in this note is appropriate, and in some ways not > actually different from RDF reification of statements. However, I think > there is potential for confusion "What has all this got to do with > reification?" - for me the best fix would be to use a different term in > this note. Reification is the proper term. For example, it is also used in UML books to describe association classes. I would suggest to put in a NOTE in the text to indicate that the term is used in the general sense and does ot refer to RDF reification. Guus > >> Thanks in advance, >> >> Natasha and Alan >> > > Jeremy > -- Free University Amsterdam, Computer Science De Boelelaan 1081a, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands Tel: +31 20 444 7739/7718 E-mail: schreiber@cs.vu.nl Home page: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~guus/
Received on Thursday, 6 May 2004 17:47:16 UTC