Re: Define a property to have an EMPTY range ... use owl:Nothing?

• From: Peter F. Patel-Schneider <pfps@research.bell-labs.com>
• Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 10:47:50 -0400 (EDT)
• To: costello@mitre.org
• Cc: www-rdf-interest@w3.org
• Message-Id: <20030514.104750.128867602.pfps@research.bell-labs.com>

From: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@mitre.org>
Subject: Define a property to have an EMPTY range ... use owl:Nothing?
Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 10:30:35 -0400

> 
> Hi Folks,
> 
> Oscar Corcho sent me an interesting idea - use owl:Nothing to represent
> EMPTY, e.g., 
> 
>     <rdf:Property rdf:ID="secret">
>         <rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Document"/>
>         <rdfs:range rdf:resource="&owl;Nothing"/>
>     </rdf:Property>
> 
> A very interesting idea!  Are there any drawbacks to this?  Does it
> achieve the desired result of requiring secret to have an EMPTY range,
> e.g.,
> 
>     <Document>
>         <secret/>
>     </Document
> 
> /Roger

There are definitely drawbacks.

The above is still not correct RDF.  Further, it can't be corrected to
achieve a consistent OWL ontology, even as in something like

  <Document>
   <rdfs:subClassOf>
     <owl:Restriction>
       <owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#secret" />
       <owl:minCardinality rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">1</owl:minCardinality>
     </owl:Restriction>
   </rdfs:subClassOf>
  </Document>

peter

Received on Wednesday, 14 May 2003 10:48:00 UTC