Re: Some thoughts on the semantics of domain and range (was: Re: RDFS bug "A property can have at most one range property")

On Fri, 15 Sep 2000, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:

> The solution to this problem that has been used in many frame systems and
> throughout the description logic community is to have the range of a
> property to be specified piecewise.  In each domain of interest you state
> what the range of the property is for that domain.

Yes; the RDFS WG discussed this under title of 'class specific
constraints', along with various other richer forms of constraint (data
types etc). Everything you say makes sense, and can I think be implemented
in/for RDF. The decision of the WG was to keep the RDFS 1.0 spec pretty
stark and simple, but make it clear that we expect and welcome richer
facilities such as these to be added in post-1.0 work. The RDFS CR is
(hopefully) reasonably clear on this front: there are many more
interesting and useful constructs than we could put into 1.0. With the OIL
and DAML work I think we're seeing this approach come to fruition, perhaps
providing some constructs that might in the future be gathered up as a 1.1
or 2.0 RDFS proposal...

Dan

Received on Friday, 15 September 2000 08:44:08 UTC