rdfsProperty

rdfs:Property is a class in the RDF Schema (RDFS) vocabulary that denotes RDF properties, i.e., the predicates used in RDF triples. Resources that are properties are instances of rdfs:Property, and many processors infer type information such as rdf:type rdfs:Property for well-known predicates like rdfs:domain, rdfs:range, and rdfs:subPropertyOf. The class rdfs:Property is a subclass of rdfs:Resource, reflecting that properties are themselves resources.

The purpose of rdfs:Property is to enable meta-modeling and description of properties. Using rdfs:domain and rdfs:range, one can express the intended class of subjects and objects for a property, and rdfs:subPropertyOf allows the creation of property hierarchies. While RDF provides only general primitive semantics, RDFS properties such as rdfs:domain, rdfs:range, and rdfs:subPropertyOf enable basic reasoning: if a resource uses a property with a known domain, some inferences about its subject type can be drawn, and so on.

In comparison with OWL, RDFS does not distinguish between object properties, datatype properties, or complete/functional properties; these distinctions are provided by OWL. Nevertheless, rdfs:Property remains the canonical type for all RDF properties, and many vocabularies declare the type of their predicates as rdfs:Property to indicate that a resource plays the role of a property.

Example: a property ex:knows can be declared as rdf:type rdfs:Property, and connected with ex:Person as its domain and range, enriching the schema with basic semantics.