Screwdrivers generally have only a small set of head configurations (flat, Phillips, hex) because the intention is to make accessing contents or securing parts easy (or at least uniform).
Now imagine how frustrating it would be if every screw and bolt in your house or car required a unique screwdriver head. They might be grouped together (for example, a bunch of different sized hex heads), but each one was slightly different. Any maintenance task would take much longer and the amount of time spent just organizing the screwdrivers would be inordinate.
Yet that is precisely the approach that most OWL modelers take when they over-specify their ontology’s properties.
“Avoiding Property Proliferations – Part 1” discusses the pitfalls of habitually applying domains and ranges to properties.
Click here to download the whitepaper.
