[oslc-core] Expressing oslc:valueType and/or oslc:range within RDFS
Steve K Speicher
sspeiche at us.ibm.com
Wed May 16 09:51:23 EDT 2012
In thinking about best to define our vocabularies in a reusable way across
other domains within OSLC and beyond, I think it would be good to be able
to define each vocabulary term as:
Predicate QName -- Value Type QName -- Meaningful description string --
Some indication of its maturity [stable | learning | proposed]
It would also be desirable to use a normative way to express these
vocabularies with RDF Schema/OWL or OSLC Resource Shapes. Then derive our
human-readable versions from them (like we do today) and provide
scenario-specific constraints such as read-only and occurs.
Take for example what we have in Core Common Properties [1] and Linked
Data Basic Profile [2], it follows this pattern mostly. With [1] we have
some extra details and with [2] we possibly lump value types within the
Range heading, implying rdfs:range perhaps wrongly.
It appears that RDFS doesn't provide a great way to indicate "Value Type
QName" and need to determine if OWL plays a role here. The usage of
rdfs:range is limited to rdfs:Classes, so things like xsd:String are not a
rdfs:Class.
So to better "explain" the common or expected value type, I'm suggesting
we just reuse oslc:valueType within our RDFSs. The valid choices for
oslc:valueType will be same as defined in current Core V2 spec +
rdf:Resource.
Additionally, we would create a predicate to indicate the term's maturity
or use a recommended one.
Any feedback on this approach? Suggestions on a better mechanism?
I looked around [3] for some best practices on this and appears to be a
bit spotty on the usage, other than just simply a local defined rdfs:range
object or using rdfs:Literal.
[1] - http://open-services.net/bin/view/Main/OSLCCoreSpecAppendixA
[2] - http://www.w3.org/Submission/ldbp/#bpr-prop
[3] - http://dublincore.org/schemas/rdfs/
Thanks,
Steve Speicher | IBM Rational Software | (919) 254-0645
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