[topicmapmail] Equivalence in TM and OWL/RDFS

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Stefan Schulz
| 
| The scenario: I want to denote equivalence in the ontology.
| 
| For OWL I know, that we have a property owl:equivalentClass. Is
| there a similar thing in XTM or a common way of modelling it?

The common way of handling this in topic maps is to merge the two
classes. :-)
 
| Further, being equivalent in my point of view does not mean to be
| the same, so I assume that two classes/topics may be equivalent but
| have different naming in properties, roles, relations etc. Does
| anyone know of a way how to express this in either OWL or TM/XTM?

For topic maps just defining a simple equivalence association type
should do the trick as far as expressing the equivalence goes. There
is no pre-existing association type for this, but making your own
should be easy enough. I am not sure what you mean by "naming",
though. Could you expand on that?

| Will restrictions do the job for OWL?

I'm afraid I can't answer this question for OWL.

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
GSM: +47 98 21 55 50                  <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >