Re: Mixing classes and instances

Hello. I've put down a proposal for expressing DPV as a SKOS vocabulary. 
You can find the entire analysis and thought process on my blog [1]. 
I've put the summary from it here for convenience.

Admittedly, I'm by no means an expert on semantics of SKOS and OWL 
mixing together. So I may have missed some obvious implication or 
forgotten some crucial piece. If so, please be kind so as to point out 
to have us move forward with this discussion.

- `DPV' as an ontology also becomes a `skos:ConceptScheme'
- Core and other top-level classes become `skos:Concept' with
   `skos:inScheme <DPV>'
- Core and other top-level classes are instances of `owl:Class'
- Taxonomies are created using instances of `skos:Concept' and using
   `skos:broader' and `skos:narrower' relationships.
- Properties are declared with domain or range as the appropriate
   top-level class, for example `dpv:hasPersonalData rdfs:range
   dpv:PersonalData'
- What used to be /instances/ of specific concepts are now represented
   as instances of `skos:Concept' and whatever top-level concept they
   represent. For example, as: `ex:MyEmail a dpv:PersonalData,
   skos:Concept' ; To declare what is their closest concept within DPV
   taxonomy, SKOS properties are used thus: `ex:MyEmail skos:broader
   dpv:EmailAddress, dpv:Identifier' .
- T-Box and A-box are kept strictly separate thus making this OWL-DL
   compatible. However, SPECIAL and TRAPEZE's reasoners won't work any
   longer because there are no sub-class relationships. To remedy this, a
   /separate/ serialisation using OWL and using a separate IRI is
   provided.
- For other general uses, SKOS and OWL mixed like this provide a better
   possibility for using as needed, whether requiring property domains
   and ranges, or for further extending concepts and creating instances
   at arbitrary levels of abstractions.
- SKOS provides a lot of useful organisational tools, like
   /ConceptScheme/ which can be further used to group concepts without
   declaring hierarchies. For example, in `LegalEntity', concept schemes
   can be created to separate what is essentially a /legal role/ such as
   a controller from what is a /type/ of organisation such as
   SME. Through this, the actual legal entity taxonomy would be clean and
   not include these categorisation, since /ConceptScheme/ is disjoint
   from /Concept/ within SKOS.

[1] https://harshp.com/dev/dpv/dpv-skos-analysis.html

Regards,
Harsh

On 18/01/2022 15:59, Harshvardhan J. Pandit wrote:
> 
> So to conclude, there's a proposal on the table to move to SKOS, I 
> support/lead it, and we will also provide RDFS and OWL separately as 
> alternatives to keep existing adopters/users happy.

-- 
---
Harshvardhan J. Pandit, Ph.D
Research Fellow
ADAPT Centre, Trinity College Dublin
https://harshp.com/

Received on Saturday, 22 January 2022 14:58:56 UTC