RDFS
RDFS (RDF Schema) is a simple
ontology language that supports simple statements about classes and
properties. Resources can be typed with a class via the
rdf:type
property; a class can be made a subclass of
another via the rdfs:subClassOf
property; a property can be
made a subproperty of another via the rdfs:subPropertyOf
property; and finally, properties can be given range and domains (as
classes) via the rdfs:range
and rdfs:domain
properties, respectively.
Note that RDFS does not support any forms of negation, disjointness, etc. Therefore, a dataset augmented with an RDFS ontology cannot be inconsistent.
Furthermore, RDFS makes no clear separation between individuals, classes and properties (like OWL does). So a resource can e.g. be both a class and a property.
A sKWRL encoding of (most of) the RDFS semantics can be found here.
Guides and tutorials
- IN3060-lecture on RDFS (2020)
- RDF Schema 1.1 (W3C specification)
- Wikipedia page on RDFS