'owl:Class and rdfs:Class' vs. 'owl:Class or rdfs:Class'

Hi,

does anyone know of an already defined best practice re. using 
'owl:Class and rdfs:Class' vs. 'owl:Class or rdfs:Class' type definition 
for concepts in ontologies? (I've searched at ontologydesignpatterns.org 
for it, but didn't found something).
For example the FOAF ontology uses both types in their ontology 
definition [1] (for better reading ;) ). However, I think this depends 
on the evolution of the FOAF ontology, that means it was first defined 
only by using rdfs:Class and owl:Class was added later. On the other 
side, for example the Music Ontology [2] uses only owl:Class for its 
concept definitions (which was design some year later).
The reason for supporting both is that RDFS only systems are then also 
able to process semantic graphs from ontologies with rdfs:Class typed 
concepts.
On the other side, modern SPARQL engines, such as this one from the 
Virtuoso Server [3], are able to handle transitivity - a feature, which 
is very important re. ontologies (I think).

Cheers,

Bob


[1] http://www1.inf.tu-dresden.de/~s9736463/ontologies/FOAF_-_20100101.n3
[2] http://motools.sourceforge.net/doc/musicontology.n3
[3] http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/features-comparison-matrix/

Received on Wednesday, 16 June 2010 11:09:57 UTC