- From: Richard Newman <r.newman@reading.ac.uk>
- Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 01:32:48 -0800
- To: Andreas Andreakis <andreas.andreakis@gmx.de>
- Cc: semantic-web at W3C <semantic-web@w3c.org>
Let's have a counter-example.
I know two people named David Green. Almost no literal-valued
property can really be termed inverse-functional: even genetic code
sequences can be shared (between twins, for example). Certainly,
terming names ("Tiger Woods") as IFPs (your more "fundamental
problem") doesn't work.
> So, in a relational Database this problem would have never arrised.
> So why canīt be do the same in Ontologies ?
Well, as has been pointed out, we can -- IFPs. We don't do so very
often because our assertions have global scope, and I *know* that the
two David Greens are separate individuals.
Relational databases rarely choose to deal with the possibilities of
integrating data from a dozen sources.
-R
Received on Saturday, 19 November 2005 09:33:00 UTC