Re: Calling a spade a spade, and a key a key

> Sandro Hawke just posted a nice exposition of an RDF problem
> that contained the following text:
> 
> > >The first is a description of a web page and the second is a
> > >description of the W3C.   They are each unambiguously identified, but
> > >different reverse-functional properties are used.
> 
> The phrase "reverse-function" property refers to what are more
> commonly know as "keys".  The OWL spec uses the term
> "inverseFunctional" in place of the term (non-compound) "key" to
> describe an RDF property that serves as a key for instances
> belonging to the domain of that property.  Within the small community
> of description logic developers, the equivalence of "inverseFunctional"
> and "key" are well understood.  Outside of that community, relatively
> few individuals will figure out this mapping until someone schools
> them in the meaning of the arcane OWL terminology.
> 
> The fact that OWL omits the notion of a compound key from its
> spec is a major oversight.  The fact that they omit the term "key" from the
> spec is also unfortunate.  This kind of disregard for common modelling
> practices will retard the acceptance of RDF by a larger community.  We
> can partially overcome the obstacles imposed by OWL by adopting
> conventional terminology in our own correspondence, briefings, etc.

I meant to use the OWL term.   I kind of prefered the DAML+OIL term
(UnambiguousProperty), myself.  But I see your point.   You might want
to raise the issue on public-webont-comments@w3.org, so you can be
sure the WebOnt group will read it and respond.

   -- sandro

Received on Friday, 13 December 2002 15:56:15 UTC