Property-function relationships. The seven pillars of oxidation catalysis describe several criteria associated with the catalyst performance: 1. lattice oxygen, 2. metaloxygen bond strength, 3. host structure, 4. redox properties, 5. multifunctionality of active sites, 6. site isolation, and, 7. phase cooperation. Based on these pillars, materials properties have been proposed as descriptors for the reactivity in alkane oxidation. However, we find that such descriptors are not able to consistently capture the reactivity trends across the materials and reactions analyzed in this work.