FW: [Ontology] UCDs vs ontologies?

[Tony Linde]

[forwarded from dm to semantics]

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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