Re: some questions about the ORG Ontology

Hi João Paulo,

On 21/11/12 19:25, João Paulo Almeida wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> I have some questions about the ORG Ontology:
>
> Can Posts contain sub Organizational Units? This is currently allowed in
> the ontology, but does not seem to make sense to me when I think of
> applications and the intuitive connotation of Post. (I am still trying
> to make sense of what are the benefits of Post being a subclass of
> Organization. The fact that a Post can be held by multiple people does
> not seem to be enough, since Post could also be a direct subclass of
> foaf:Agent, in which case it could be a foaf:Group.)

That is permitted, it isn't likely to be common, and may not be hugely 
useful, but no reason to exclude it.

As we've discussed before, I'm told that UK public sector has strange 
situations where one body has a post which is in fact is held by an 
organized group such as a committee. I believe that is a stronger 
structure than a foaf:Group because is organized for a common purpose 
and can act as an agent. That's all a org:Organization requires.

Could such an organization have units? Yes. A committee might have a 
sub-part such as a secretariat made up of several people. Is it *useful* 
to model that?  Seems unlikely but there's no reason to exclude it.

> What is the difference between hasSubOrganization - when used between
> org:Organization and org:Post - and hasPost (which has domain
> Organization and range Post)?

I'm not sure that the post-as-organization is *necessarily* a 
sub-organization of the organization that has the post. It is likely to 
be commonly true but in principle things like committees could have 
members such as lay or advisory members who are not formally members of 
the post-holding-organization.

> If there is no difference (and if one
> insists that Post is a subclass of Organization) shouldn't org:hasPost
> be a subproperty of org:hasSubOrganization (just like  org:hasUnit is)?

No, that may be often true but since it's not necessarily true it 
shouldn't be put in as a constraint.

> If an agent is a member of a sub organization (O2), which is a sub
> organization of an organization (O1), is the agent also a member of O1?

In general I would expect so but that is not enforced in the ontology.
Someone using ORG might choose to use memberOf to represent the employee 
relationship and an employee if a subsidiary is not necessarily an 
employee of a parent holding company.

> Suppose that we're talking about a particular University, e.g., "The
> Federal University of Espírito Santo". Would we then have different
> Posts for each of the "Associate Professors" that are members of the
> university?

Depends on what you are trying to achieve by modelling the University. 
What your competency questions are. Modelling is always relative to some 
range of intended usage.

It also depends on the nature of that relationship. I don't know what an 
Associate Professor is in Espírito Santo, are those positions that 
existing independent of the people holding them?  If so then you could 
certainly use Posts.

In the UK then there is the notion of an endowed chair and different 
people may hold that chair at different times. That would seem like a 
good time to use Post.

> Is organization (domain org:Membership, range foaf:Agent) a functional
> property? (I think so.)

Yes, that would be a reasonable constraint.

> Is organization (domain org:Membership, range org:Organization) a
> functional property?

?

> Is role (domain org:Membership, range org:Role) a functional property?

Yes, that would be a reasonable constraint.

Dave

Received on Thursday, 22 November 2012 16:53:49 UTC