Peter, (01)
That's the way most businesses handle their personnel: (02)
> Since when is an "employee" a sub-type of "person"?! (03)
However, one of the major mining companies used mules
to pull ore out of the mines. (They didn't want to use
anything that might create sparks that could trigger
an explosion if there were any stray gasses around.) (04)
When they computerized their system, they assigned
employee numbers to the mules. For that company, you
could generalize the ontology in either of two ways: (05)
1. Assume that Employee is a subtype of Animal. (06)
2. Assume that Person could include nonhuman animals. (07)
But in any case, whenever you say X is a subtype of Y,
you mean "every X is a Y." That is all it says. (08)
John (09)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Subscribe/Config: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (010)
|