RE: Question regarding the Organization Ontology

Hi Anne.

The first question which sprang to my mind was:

In your case - is it a post someone always holds (such as the US presidency which always has an occupant) or is it occupied as needed/filled (such as the post of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham in the UK which is filled only when an MP wishes to resign from Parliament, and can stand vacant for long periods of time, (or be filled many times in one day as was the case with the resignation of 15 Ulster MP's in 1985, or filled without the knowledge or consent of the appointee as was the case of Gerry Adams a few years ago). Does it (the post) have a specified term of appointment?

The most efficient model may differ depending on the nature of the post as well. The post may always exist as long as the org does, but be unfilled. Or, it may be dependent on the existence of another agent - for instance, if the hypothetical post of "Mother" existed in the hypothetical Org of Family, that post is dependent on a Child agent existing.

So all that said - probably then the simplest way to model the time period is in this case to use Prov (i.e. Change Events) to say "post was filled at this time point by this agent" and "post was vacated at this time by the same agent". So post gets one assertion per appointee (it was held by x) and each agent gets two assertions (assumed post on this timedate stamp and vacated post on this timedate stamp) and that should give you all the relevant assertions and inferences you need to form a complete graph of who held the post and when. One would then use PROV to model how the post is filled including the agent who does the appointment and their remit to do so (i.e. The provenance of the appointment).

My two cents - there are a lot smarter people on this list than I who do this stuff in their sleep. But hope it helps some.

Cheers

Chris Beer
Australia

Sent from my Sony Xperia™ smartphone

---- Anne Ward wrote ----

>Hi,
>
>I am planning to use the organization ontology in examples of defining relationships between persons and organizations. In particular, I found the addition of “Post” quite applicable to the examples I am trying to illustrate.
>
>I have a question regarding its usage, when specifying that a person “holds” a “Post” within an organization. As a “Post” can be held by many people over time, what would be the best approach for modelling the time interval in a which a given person “holds” a given “Post”?
>
>Please advise.
>
>Thank you.
>
>Anne Ward
>