less-restrictive range and domain terms

Hi All,

I've recently found myself wanting a less-restrictive version of
rdfs:range (or owl:allValuesFrom) and rdfs:domain. I want to say
'property *can* have range of class foo' rather than 'property *must*
have range of class foo'.

I first came across this requirement with my veudas RDF browser when
consuming RDF without schema information. Hints like 'can have range'
help when rendering the editing UI. They can also be inferred easily
from the RDF.

The second example was attempting to implement a cross-store querying
mechanism - I want to make statements like 'in the context of store A,
property canHaveRange class' This works as a useful hint for the query
chopper-upper to decide which patterns to run against which stores.

Does such a term exist anywhere or shall i make one up?

(or is there a better way? :-)

Many thanks,

Phil

Received on Tuesday, 4 May 2004 11:53:26 UTC