- OWL expresses a small subset of First Order Logic
- it has a “structure” (class hierarchies, properties, datatypes…),
- and “axioms” can be stated within that structure only
- i.e., OWL uses FOL to describe “traditional” ontology concepts…
- …but it is not a general logic system per se!
- (the same is true for RDFS, by the way)
- Inference based on OWL is within this framework only
- it seems modest, but has proven to be remarkably useful…