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

I don't think there is an established best practice related to this 
topic.  Moreover, your choice may depend on your application, use case, 
practical needs, etc. However, as far as I can foresee, using both 
rdfs:Class and owl:Class is perfectly safe wrt to RDF/RDFS tools and 
perfectly safe wrt OWL tools.

AZ

Le 16/06/2010 12:08, Bob Ferris a écrit :
> 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/
>


-- 
Antoine Zimmermann
Post-doctoral researcher at:
Digital Enterprise Research Institute
National University of Ireland, Galway
IDA Business Park
Lower Dangan
Galway, Ireland
antoine.zimmermann@deri.org
http://vmgal34.deri.ie/~antzim/

Received on Wednesday, 16 June 2010 11:42:37 UTC