Hi all,
David, I know you already know my personal view of this stuff with our
recent private interactions & on the umbel mailing list. For the LOD
mailing list readers, here is the background for this conversation:
http://groups.google.com/group/umbel-ontology/browse_thread/thread/6bd977e50e1f372b
Matthias suggested to used rdfs:seeAlso. I think it would make sense to
createa subproperty of this property for that kind of purpose.
In UMBEL we created a property that "is like" owl:sameAs, but that
doesn't entail as much as sameAs does. *I am not suggesting* to use it
for this specific use case, but *I would* suggest it to use it instead
of owl:sameAs when "automatic" linkage is done between two datasets
where issues can arise. This property is called "umbel:isLike" and come
from the UMBEL ontology here:
http://umbel.org/ontology/umbel.n3
The umbel:isLike property is described as:
"he property umbel:isLike is used to assert an associative link between
similar individuals who may or may not be identical, but are believed to
be so. This property is not intended as a general expression of
similarity, but rather the likely but uncertain same identity of the two
resources being related.
This property can and should be changed if the certainty of the sameness
of identity is subsequently determined.
In general, we may not be able to assert that two individuals are the
same based solely on current information on hand. However, there may be
quite reasonable bases or methods that the two individuals are likely
the same without being one hundred percent sure.
umbel:isLike has the semantics of likely identity, but where there is
some uncertainty that the two resources indeed refer to the exact same
individual with the same identity. Such uncertainty can arise when, for
example, common names may be used for different individuals (e.g., John
Smith).
It is appropriate to use this property when there is strong belief the
two resources refer to the same individual with the same identity, but
that association can not be asserted at the present time with certitude."
Hope this helps this conversation, and helps to extends the "owl:sameAs"
conversation that arise from time to time (here is another one:
http://i9606.blogspot.com/2009/02/semantic-dissonance-in-uniprot.html)
Thanks!
Take care,
Fred
