Owl: someValuesFrom vs. Owl: minCardinalilty

Question

Usually, when we say "all my children are women," we intend to mean "and there is at least one of them." The famous pizza tutorial (V1.3) describes this on page 100, saying that usually a mistake has a universal constraint (owl: allValuesFrom) without an essential constraint (owl: someValuesFrom).

owl: someValuesFrom is a kind of reverse way of saying "and there is at least one." Is there a logical, official, or aesthetic reason to use owl: minCardinality instead?

Answer 1

owl: someValuesFrom is a kind of reverse way of saying, "there is at least one." Is there a logical, performance or aesthetic reason? instead use owl: minCardinality instead?

OWL is built on description logic, and one of the important aspects of developing a description of logic is studying the complexity of reasoning algorithms when various language functions are present. Take a look, for example, at Logic Complexity Navigator Description , where you see the complexity of various description logic.

, someValuesFrom, minCardinality, , , (, minCardinality). , , , OWL 2, , & ; p.C & equiv; ≥1 .. OWL 1, , , & exist; p.C, . , ≥1 p, ≥1 p.C. , OWL 1

& ; hasChild.Female

≥1 hasChild

≥1 hasChild.Female

This in itself may be a good enough reason to prefer & exist; when all you have to say is "at least one"; you get backward compatibility, which can be very important for arguments that support OWL 1 but not (all) OWL 2.