Re: subclass loops, proper subclasses and so on

From: Mike Dean (mdean@bbn.com)
Date: 08/28/01 

> 1. What reason can there be to forbid subclass loops, other than 
> subClassOf being understood to mean proper subclass?

Several possibilities:

1) Tools that traverse inheritance hierarchies have to
explicitly handle cycles rather than just recurse.  This
could break current RDFS tools.

2) Subclass loops often indicate a design error or a
partially applied change.

3) Java and C++ programmers don't expect subclass cycles.

> So, what justification can there be for asserting that 
> rdfs:subClassOf does *not* mean proper subclass?

Richard and I had the same question (a good sign for me):
Does "proper subclass" imply the (possible) existance of
some instance that is a member of the class but not of the
subclass?

	Mike

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