Why I Use Shacl for Defining Ontology Models

Highlights

"When you create a model in SHACL, you do not need to think whether you should use rdfs:subClassOf or owl:equivalentClass in defining restriction on property values."
- related: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65052036/what-is-the-difference-between-owlequivalentclass-and-rdfssubclassof-when-maki
  - "Semantically, you are defining the class as Primitive (subClassOf) versus Defined (equivalentClass). The main difference is in inferencing in one or both directions.
  The Primitive class is single direction:
```
any Thing with ShipsTo with values from Italy can be inferred to be a deliversToItaly 
```
  The Defined class is both directions: as above, and any Thing that is a deliversToItay can be inferred to have shipTo with values from Italy
  
  A Defined class is used when you are confident that you have necessary and sufficient rules for class membership - otherwise Primitive is used for necessary rules only."
- t.2024.07.11.12 but OWL doesn't define restriction in the same way as shacl
While you could use types from OWL to say that a property is an Object or a Datatype property, SHACL does not consider this. It will be looking only at the constraints specified in the shape e.g., datatype and class constraints!

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