Semantics of the schema.org data model (for integration with RDFS, OWL, etc.)

Dear schema.org community,

[trying again; first mail didn't go through]

I have some questions about the semantics of the schema.org data model 
(http://schema.org/docs/datamodel.html).

The documentation of the data model speaks of

* types (with multiple inheritance)
* properties (with multiple domains and ranges)
* and finally there is the "Thing" type.

The formal semantics of these is not defined, but am I right to assume 
that it is the same as the one of

* rdf:type
* rdfs:Class (or owl:Class, maybe in an OWL Full semantics?)
* rdfs:subClassOf
* rdf:Property
* rdfs:domain
* rdfs:range
* owl:Thing

?

My background: I am one of the authors of the draft ISO standard on 
"ontology integration and interoperability" (http://ontoiop.org), which 
specifies the Distributed Ontology Language (DOL).  DOL allows for 
integrating ontology modules written in different languages, with an 
extensible supply of ontology languages.  Integrating the schema.org 
data model as one of these "ontology languages" would allow for 
connecting structured data all over the Web (i.e. instances of the 
schema.org data model) to more expressive logical formalizations of the 
domains involved.  This goes beyond the OWL ontology at 
http://schema.org/docs/schemaorg.owl:

1. We would support ontological descriptions not just of the standard 
schema.org schema, but of any non-standard extension.
2. DOL allows for such ontological descriptions to be given not just in 
OWL but, e.g., in Common Logic, F-logic, etc. (i.e. possibly languages 
that are more expressive than OWL, and that do not necessarily natively 
support IRIs).  This is e.g. useful for validation purposes: "the 
lowPrice of an AggregateOffer must be <= the highPrice".

But, of course, integrating the schema.org data model into the DOL 
framework requires a formal semantics, which is why I'm asking these 
questions.

Cheers, and thanks in advance for any help,

Christoph

-- 
Christoph Lange, School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham
http://cs.bham.ac.uk/~langec, Skype duke4701

→ Building & Exploring Web Based Environments.  Seville, Spain, 27 Jan–
   1 Feb 2013.  Deadline 22 Sep. http://iaria.org/conferences2013/WEB13.html

Received on Wednesday, 29 August 2012 16:24:48 UTC