Re: Why Literals should be unique and why this is a serious issue

• From: Leigh Dodds <leigh@ldodds.com>
• Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 09:05:59 +0000
• To: Andreas Andreakis <andreas.andreakis@gmx.de>
• Cc: semantic-web at W3C <semantic-web@w3c.org>
• Message-ID: <437EEAF7.2080806@ldodds.com>

Andreas Andreakis wrote:

> As an example: How could this problem be solved in a relational shema ? 
> Simply by setting the property personName as a unique key. Obvious right ?
> So, in a relational Database this problem would have never arrised. So 
> why can´t be do the same in Ontologies ?

You can, using Inverse Functional Properties:

http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref/#InverseFunctionalProperty-def

To define a literl as being InverseFunctional you have to use OWL Full.
But the support is already there.

Cheers,

L.

Received on Saturday, 19 November 2005 09:06:39 UTC