RE: question on domain

First, thanks to everyone who has responded!

I think I am hearing that rdfs:domain is not intended as a mechanism to
validate an instance of a class but to assist in inferencing or as the
primer puts it "to further describe application-specific properties"
where the inferencing would be "application-specific".

Does RDF or RDFS have a mechanism for enforcing/validating the
properties that compose a class?  This seems related to the question
stated below.

Thanks again.



-----Original Message-----
From: semantic-web-request@w3.org [mailto:semantic-web-request@w3.org]
On Behalf Of Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Sent: Friday, April 21, 2006 9:54 AM
To: fmanola@acm.org
Cc: ujohnmc@ReedElsevier.com; semantic-web@w3.org
Subject: Re: question on domain


From: Frank Manola <fmanola@acm.org>
Subject: Re: question on domain
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2006 09:51:21 -0400

> Johnson, Matthew C. (LNG-ALB) wrote:
> > Hello,

[...]

> > Based on my understanding, one can define a property and then
specify 
> > the domain for that property which is the list of classes in which
that 
> > property is allowed.  
> 
> Not quite.  As several other responders have noted, specifying the 
> domain doesn't *disallow* use of the property with instances of other 
> classes.  What it does is license inferences about what classes your 
> instance is also a member of, based on the domain declaration.  You
are 
> free to disregard those inferences if you don't think they are 
> appropriate.

Huh?  Do you actually mean that you can legitimately use RDF(S) and
ignore
the meaning its constructs?  

[...]

> --Frank

Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research

Received on Friday, 21 April 2006 16:01:07 UTC