It is a puzzle. I've wondered about use property value chains with a handful of adjectival constraint relations getting chained to the primary relation. Something along the lines of <Entity A> <has Constraint Adjective Relationship> --chained-to-- <has Specific Relationship> <Entity B> where <has Constraint Adjective Relationship> might be something like <mustBeLessThan> <has Specific Relationship> might be something like <hasLength>
Placing the adjective relationship first might allow the 2nd relationship to be a DataTypeProperty letting put in a specific XSD type for the actual value. For the most part though, I'd be inclined to treat constraints as reified . In my foundational ontology, a Constraint is a sub-class of Reason to Intentional Stance and then via multiple parents , and up to Mediating, Abstract and Continuant. Intentional Stance is a sibling of N-Ary Relation which I use to anchor reified forms of tricky concepts like Equipment, Resource, Target and the like. All of which need more than the a simple domain and range to fully specify. I couple of "entity attribute" relations attached to the reified relations to designate their composing elements: hasObject and hasSubject (along with their inverses: isObjectOf and isSubjectOf).. This approach let me deal with N-ary relations even back under OWL 1.0 DL in a very flexible way. Supports the use of lots of policy representations, rule constructs (for Jena rules, etc.) or SPARQL queries for semantic web services. Thanks for a great question. Cheers, Jim Jacobs [email protected] [email protected] On Tuesday, September 25, 2012 10:38:50 AM UTC-4, Bohms, H.M. (Michel) wrote: > > Dear all, > > > > Once in a while we ask ourselves: what is the best way to model numerical > constraints. > > In the past we used SPIN/SPARQL constraints but can’t we do it more > rdf/rdfs/owl-based? > > Like simple example: SmallCar being subclass of Car with length property > where SmallCar has length < 2 (‘meter’ acc. to nasa ont.) > > > > (Or subclasses for “requiredItems” as subclasses limiting the solution > space in case of configuration processes). > > > > Kind of hasValue but then more flexible “hasLessThanValue etc. > > > > Guess all this is OWA-related like the examples in: > > > http://answers.semanticweb.com/questions/1476/expressing-constraints-using-rdfowl-or-something-else > > > > Any input very welcome, Michel > > > > > > Dr. ir. H.M. (Michel) Böhms > Sr. Research Scientist > Technical Sciences > > T +31 (0)88 866 31 07 > M +31 (0)63 038 12 20 > E [email protected] <javascript:> > > Location <http://www.tno.nl/locaties/dtm> > Disclaimer <http://www.tno.nl/emaildisclaimer> > > > [image: Description: > C:\Users\bohmshm\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Signatures\TNO > (EN)_files\logo_signature.gif] <http://www.tno.nl/> > > > > > -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Group "TopBraid Suite Users", the topics of which include Enterprise Vocabulary Network (EVN), TopBraid Composer, TopBraid Live, TopBraid Ensemble, SPARQLMotion, SPARQL Web Pages and SPIN. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/topbraid-users?hl=en
