Re: [Proposal][SKOS-Core] handling top concepts

* Miles, AJ (Alistair)  <A.J.Miles@rl.ac.uk> [2004-08-04 16:49+0100]
> 
> OK here goes at the compelling argument ...
> 
> So you've got a concept A and two concept schemes X and Y.
> 
> Concept A is in scheme X and also in scheme Y.
> 
> Concept A is a top concept in scheme X, but not in scheme Y.
> 
> Using the current version of SKOS Core this is written as (assuming standard
> namespaces) ...
> 
> <rdf:RDF>
> 
> 	<skos:TopConcept rdf:about="http://example.org#A">
> 		<skos:inScheme rdf:resource="http://example.org#X"/>
> 		<skos:inScheme rdf:resource="http://example.org#Y"/>
> 	</skos:TopConcept>
> 
> </rdf:RDF>
> 
> So now a program wants to identify all the top concepts from scheme Y, and
> applies the query ...
> 
> SELECT ?x
> WHERE
> (?x rdf:type skos:TopConcept) (?x skos:inScheme http://example.org#Y) 
> 
> ... and will get back concept A included in the result set, which is
> incorrect.
> 
> I.e. the true semantics of the top concept idea are not properly expressed
> in the current SKOS Core vocab.  We need to be able to express unambiguously
> which scheme a concept is a top concept in.  
> 
> Hence the proposal for a skos:hasTopConcept property.
> 
> So under the new proposal, the above scenario would expressed as follows ...
> 
> <rdf:RDF>
> 
> 	<skos:Concept rdf:about="http://example.org#A">
> 		<skos:inScheme rdf:resource="http://example.org#X"/>
> 		<skos:inScheme rdf:resource="http://example.org#Y"/>
> 	</skos:Concept>
> 
> 	<skos:ConceptScheme rdf:about="http://example.org#X">
> 		<skos:hasTopConcept rdf:resource="http://example.org#A"/>
> 	</skos:ConceptScheme>
> 
> 	<skos:ConceptScheme rdf:about="http://example.org#Y">
> 	</skos:ConceptScheme>
> 
> </rdf:RDF>
> 
> This removes the ambiguity. 
> 
> Am I getting there yet?
> 

Thanks, this identifies a discomfort I've had w/ interactions between 
'top concept' notion and thesaurus mixing. At heart you're saying 
'top concept' is a relation between a a scheme/dataset/thesaurus and
a concept. Makes sense to me.

So would this be:

<owl:FunctionalProperty rdf:about="http:///....../skos/core#hasTopConcept"/>

ie. anything that has a skos:hasTopConcept has only one such thing?

Dan

Received on Wednesday, 4 August 2004 12:10:07 UTC