[Ontology] UCDs vs ontologies?

[Sebastien Derriere]

[posted to dm only to avoid cross-posting]

Elizabeth Auden wrote:
> 
> Incidentally, I've posted a first go at a VOEvent ontology (OWL-DL format)
> on the VOTech wiki at
> http://wiki.eurovotech.org/bin/view/VOTech/VoEventOntology. Any comments
> on the structure, concepts, and coverage of this v0.000000001 ontology
> would be appreciated.

  Hi,

  Reading the questions you list in the above page, I have a comment
on points 2 and 3.
  When trying to build small ontologies, I found (and still do find)
extremely stupid to be "forced" to define one slot dedicated to each
class
to indicate "hasSomething".
  In your example, Contact / hasContact , How / hasHow, What / hasWhat,
...
I found this (and this is the case in every example I could find) awful.

  I wish we could define something where we don't have to be omniscients
when building the ontology, but where the ability to make reasonning
would
not be lost. Something like:
  - Having a class named Property
  - Having classes Contact, How, What, ... being subclasses of Property
(these classes might have many superclasses)
  - Having a unique slot "hasProperty" with a value being a Class, with
the allowed class "Property" (thus also allowing Property's subclasses)

  That way, instead of having to define zillions of slots (i.e. at least
one
per new subclass of Property) and writing:

MyConcept hasContact Contact
MyConcept hasHow How
MyConcept hasWhat What
... and as many as there are different possible properties

we could simply write things like:

MyConcept hasProperty Property  (with multiple cardinality, this
would cover all the above: no need to predefine all possible cases)

  and if we need to be more precise (restrict allowed properties):

MyConcept hasProperty (Class with superclass Contact or How or What)

  Anyone experienced could tell if my own view is really really
wrong? Or incompatible with the way description logics and reasonners
work? I hope this could make our lives easier when we stop playing
with toy-ontologies and go into the big ones.

Sebastien.
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