Re: Reified relations in OWL

On 25 Feb 2010, at 21:53, Paul Oude Luttighuis wrote:

> Dear OWL mailing list,
>
> In a current project, we take an approach to semantic modelling  
> based on reified relations only. In that context, I am looking for  
> ways of using reified relations in OWL. I am aware of the ways of  
> mimicking reified relations proposed in http://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-n-aryRelations/ 
> , but these yield awkward models. Also, such mimicking takes away  
> the graphical visualisations we need, as these tend (as in Protégé)  
> to visualise the subtyping hierarchy only, not the relations  
> (properties). In our case, subtyping is refrained from/not  
> interesting.

sorry for skipping over your initial question: why would you refrain  
from 'subtyping'?! The fact that you use the term 'subtyping' seems to  
indicate a misunderstanding of the OWL semantics...so perhaps this  
should be clarified first: e.g., in OWL, if you define the class  
"Waterbirds" as those Birds who live close to water, and Ducks as  
those Birds who say quack and live close to water, then the subclass  
relationship between Ducks and Waterbirds will be entailed, and thus  
inferred by the reasoner...as a consequence, every instance of Duck  
will also be an instance of Bird, automatically, simply due to the OWL  
semantics...

Now, perhaps you explain your 'reified relation' scenario a bit more:  
I assume you want to model n-ary relations/tuples, for n>2? Do you  
have an example?

Cheers, Uli

>
> Am I overlooking something. Can anybody point me to more natural  
> ways of modelling and graphically representing reified relations  
> with OWL?
>
> I'd be grateful for your suggestions.
>
> Best regards!
> Paul
>
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