Re: How to encode a product family?

Hi Alexandre,
that looks good!



> On 03 May 2016, at 20:38, Alexandre Bertails <bertails@apple.com> wrote:
> 
> Thanks Martin and all for the detailed responses. I think I understand a bit better how it could be done now.
> 
> What do you think of the following?
> 
> [[
> ## I still feel like we could have schema:ProductFamily as a subclass of schema:Brand


I agree that if we want schema:ProductFamiliy, it should be a subtype of schema:Brand and be clearly separate from the Product/Service/ProductModel types.

The question is whether documenting the use of schema:Brand for this purpose is as good as defining a subtype which does not introduce new properties.

As a compromise, we could add "Product families are also a form of Brand" to the description of schema:Brand and schema:brand, and add an example for this scenario to schema:Brand, schema:brand, and schema:ProductModel.

Martin

> <http://www.apple.com/iphone/#thing> a schema:Brand ;
>  schema:url <http://www.apple.com/iphone/> ;
>  schema:name "iPhone" .
> 
> <http://www.apple.com/iphone-5/#thing> a schema:ProductModel ;
>  ## note /iphone-5/ now redirects to /iphone/
>  schema:url <http://www.apple.com/iphone/> ;
>  schema:name "iPhone 5" ;
>  schema:brand <http://www.apple.com/iphone/#thing> .
> 
> <http://www.apple.com/iphone-6s/#thing> a schema:ProductModel ;
>  schema:url <http://www.apple.com/iphone-6s/> ;
>  schema:name "iPhone 6s" ;
>  schema:brand <http://www.apple.com/iphone/#thing> .
> 
> <http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone6s#gray_64gb> a schema:ProductModel ;
>  schema:url <http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone6s> ;
>  schema:name "iPhone 6s Space-Grey, 64 GB" ;
>  schema:isVariantOf <http://www.apple.com/iphone-6s/#thing> .
> ]]
> 
> Note that in our case, we need to be precise about the entities we manipulate, and where they appear. Our database is www.apple.com.
> 
> Best,
> Alexandre
> 
> 
>> On May 3, 2016, at 8:45 AM, Martin Hepp <mfhepp@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> when "product family" means a mere group of products that serve a similar purpose, I would use schema:category for the group (e.g. "iPhone"). schema:isVariantOf is meant for linking from base models to fully specified models.
>> 
>> 
>> So here is what I would use:
>> 
>> @prefix pto: <http://www.productontology.org/id/> .
>> 
>> foo:iphone1 a schema:ProductModel, pto:Smartphone;
>> 	schema:name "iPhone 1";
>> 	schema:category "Apple iPhone Family".
>> 
>> 
>> foo:iphone2 a schema:ProductModel, pto:Smartphone;
>> 	schema:name "iPhone 2";
>> 	schema:category "Apple iPhone Family".
>> 
>> foo:iphone3 a schema:ProductModel, pto:Smartphone;
>> 	schema:name "iPhone 3";
>> 	schema:category "Apple iPhone Family".
>> 
>> foo:iphone3gs a schema:ProductModel, pto:Smartphone;
>> 	schema:name "iPhone 3 GS";
>> 	schema:category "Apple iPhone Family".
>> 
>> foo:iphone4 a schema:ProductModel, pto:Smartphone;
>> 	schema:name "iPhone 4";
>> 	schema:category "Apple iPhone Family".
>> 
>> foo:iphone5 a schema:ProductModel, pto:Smartphone;
>> 	schema:name "iPhone 5";
>> 	schema:category "Apple iPhone Family".
>> 
>> foo:iphone5se a schema:ProductModel, pto:Smartphone;
>> 	schema:name "iPhone 5 SE";
>> 	schema:category "Apple iPhone Family".
>> 
>> 
>> Then, I would materialize all or the relevant fully specified models, like my new iPhone 5 SE in space-grey with 64 GB:
>> 
>> 
>> foo:iphone5se_gray_64gb a schema:ProductModel, pto:Smartphone;
>> 	schema:name "iPhone 5 SE Space-Grey, 64 GB";
>> 	schema:category "Apple iPhone Family";
>> 	schema:color "space gray";
>> 	schema:additionalProperty 
>> 		[ a schema:PropertyValue; 
>> 		  schema:name "capacity";
>> 		  schema:unitText "GB" ] .
>> 	# add more features here, see http://schema.org/PropertyValue for examples
>> 
>> 
>> Then I would state that each fully specified model is a variant of its base model:
>> 
>> foo:iphone5se_gray_64gb schema:isVariantOf foo:iphone5se.
>> 
>> You could also also indicate that the newer models are successors of the older ones:
>> 
>> foo:iphone5se schema:successorOf foo:iphone5 .
>> foo:iphone5 schema:successorOf foo:iphone4 .
>> foo:iphone3gs schema:successorOf foo:iphone3 . 
>> foo:iphone3 schema:successorOf foo:iphone2 .
>> foo:iphone2 schema:successorOf foo:iphone1 .
>> 
>> 
>> Note that successorOf is intended to be transitive (see http://www.heppnetz.de/ontologies/goodrelations/v1.html#successorOf), but we have not yet made this explicit in schema.org, because meta-properties for properties were not supported initially.
>> 
>> schema:isVariant is not transititve, because properties should be passed from the generic model to the fully specified ones with a pragmatic mechanism for overriding a property (a property will not be passed along if it is already locally specified, see http://wiki.goodrelations-vocabulary.org/Axioms#Recommended_Default_Rules). For this, the ordering of inferences can matter as soon as we have more than one level of hierarchy. If you allow complex variant relationships, the reasoning gets very difficult.
>> 
>> 
>> Further references (not all up to date):
>> 
>> http://wiki.goodrelations-vocabulary.org/Documentation/Product_variants
>> https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-vocabs/2011Oct/0040.html
>> 
>> 
>> Hope that helps!
>> 
>> Martin
>> 
>> 
>> -----------------------------------
>> martin hepp  http://www.heppnetz.de
>> mhepp@computer.org          @mfhepp
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On 03 May 2016, at 17:18, Dan Brickley <danbri@google.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> +Martin Hepp
>>> 
>>> On 3 May 2016 at 16:01, Alexandre Bertails <bertails@apple.com> wrote:
>>>> Folks,
>>>> 
>>>> I am trying to encode the following things in Schema.org:
>>>> 
>>>> 1. "iPhone is a Product family."
>>>> 
>>>> 2. "iPhone 6s is part of the iPhone Product family."
>>>> 
>>>> 3. all the Products of a Product family would be related to each other (schema:isRelatedTo), and/or similar to each other (schema:isSimilarTo).
>>>> 
>>>> Except for 3., I cannot find something that would capture exactly the notion of Product family.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> You might look at http://schema.org/ProductModel and isVariantOf ("A
>>> pointer to a base product from which this product is a variant. It is
>>> safe to infer that the variant inherits all product features from the
>>> base model, unless defined locally. This is not transitive.") and
>>> predecessorOf/successorOf (which I now see should be marked as mutual
>>> inverses, issue filed as
>>> https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/issues/1142 ).
>>> 
>>> I guess you'd need to figure out the constant "essence of iPhone" and
>>> make a generic ProductModel for that, and then relate them. I'm not
>>> sure how deep you'd want this to go e.g. I have an (excellent if
>>> ageing) iPad Mini, presumably part of an iPad Product family; would se
>>> use isSimilarTo vs iSvariantOf to link iPhone and iPad families
>>> together?
>>> 
>>> Dan
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> Any idea?
>>>> 
>>>> Alexandre
>> 
>

Received on Tuesday, 3 May 2016 18:44:03 UTC