How to declare a symmetric relation in RDF?

Question

I have two URIs and have to connect them using a relation if they have any common substring. This relation would be symmetric. How do I define this relation using RDF?

Answer 1

In plain RDF, you can simply do this:

  my:relation a my:SymmetricRelation .

This expresses that the relation my:relation is of type my:SymmetricRelation.

However, if you also want a reasoner (such as an OWL reasoner) to do "clever things" with the fact that your relation is symmetric, then plain RDF is not really enough, and you'll need to switch to OWL, and model your relation as an owl:SymmetricProperty.

  my:relation a owl:SymmetricProperty .