Best way to produce Ontology from XSD

Good Afternoon Everyone,

I'm in a bit of a puzzle just now w.r.t producing a suitable ontology
from a XSD which I have at the link below (all other configuration is
in the parent directory)

http://www.buildingsmart-tech.org/ifcXML/IFC2x3/FINAL/IFC2X3.xsd

Basically the schema describes all sorts of construction and
engineering elements such as windows, walls, doors, etc etc.
I want to build an RDF or OWL resource which uses appropriate
vocabularies to describe these elements and their various attributes.

So if I pick one element e.g


       <xs:element substitutionGroup="ifc:IfcBuildingElement" name="IfcWall"
nillable="true" type="ifc:IfcWall">
       </xs:element>
       <xs:complexType name="IfcWall">
               <xs:complexContent>
                       <xs:extension base="ifc:IfcBuildingElement">
                       </xs:extension>
               </xs:complexContent>
       </xs:complexType>

This describes an element with the name IfcWall (a typical wall) which
belongs to the ifc:IfcBuildingElement substitutionGroup and has X Y Z
properties

My idea is to use XSLT to grab all of the elements I wish to include
within the ontology (a subset), then begin modeling each element in
RDF/OWL however I'm unsure on
1) which vocabularies exist for correctly describing the relationships
(http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/)
2) How to do this in a consistent manner between elements
3) If such a task can be (semi)automated

Basically I need some help with the data modeling aspect of the work.

Any direction/information would be greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards and thanks in advance for any help

Lewis


-- 
Lewis

Received on Tuesday, 12 June 2012 16:51:16 UTC