Rdf Primer / quote 49 of 55
RDF Schema provides a type system for RDF.
RDF Schema does not provide a vocabulary of application-specific classes like exterms:Tent, ex2:Book, or ex3:Person, and properties like exterms:weightInKg, ex2:author or ex3:JobTitle. Instead, it provides the facilities needed to describe such classes and properties, and to indicate which classes and properties are expected to be used together (for example, to say that the property ex3:jobTitle will be used in describing a ex3:Person). In other words, RDF Schema provides a type system for RDF. The RDF Schema type system is similar in some respects to the type systems of object-oriented programming languages such as Java. For example, RDF Schema allows resources to be defined as instances of one or more classes. In addition, it allows classes to be organized in a hierarchical fashion; for example a class ex:Dog might be defined as a subclass of ex:Mammal which is a subclass of ex:Animal, meaning that any resource which is in class ex:Dog is also implicitly in class ex:Animal as well. However, RDF classes and properties are in some respects very different from programming language types. RDF class and property descriptions do not create a straightjacket into which information must be forced, but instead provide additional information about the RDF resources they describe.