Re: equivalentTo

From: Jim Hendler (jhendler@darpa.mil)
Date: 03/22/01


I guess I would suggest looking at the usage of equivalento -- and 
particularly I would want Jeff Heflin to weigh in on this issue 
because he uses it extensively in his ontologies, which are currently 
among the most used in the DAML repository.  He does a lot of this 
sort of thing
(from http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/plus/DAML/onts/personal1.0.daml

><Property ID="addressCity">
>   <equivalentTo 
>resource="http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/plus/DAML/onts/general1.0.dam 
>l#addressCity" />
></Property>
>
><Property ID="emailAddress">
>   <equivalentTo 
>resource="http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/plus/DAML/onts/general1.0.dam 
>l#emailAddress" />
></Property>

which lets him create new ontologies that explicitly refer to old 
ones and then extend them.  This has been useful in usage of SHOE. 
Jeff, perhaps you can comment on this issue.

Also, although I shudder to mention this, on rdfig (see 
http://rdfig.xmlhack.com) the term from DAML they're all most 
interested in is "equivalentTO" precisely because it maps to its 
English equivalent so well.  I suspect we should just keep things the 
way they are -- The semantics of equivalentto can be defined such 
that making things of different category (i.e. class, property, 
individual, etc.) equivalentto is not allowed (I.e. if I say 
damloil:equivalentTO #pfps daml:person) the DAML+OIL validator should 
come back and complain (bitterly)

  -JH

Dr. James Hendler		jhendler@darpa.mil
Chief Scientist, DARPA/ISO	703-696-2238 (phone)
3701 N. Fairfax Dr.		703-696-2201 (Fax)
Arlington, VA 22203		http://www.cs.umd.edu/~hendler


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