Re: class and inviduals

Hi Marcel, this is a typical modelling issue. The solution is to treat terms alternatively as classes or individuals according to the requirement (or conceptualization) you have. 

In case you want to talk of Ferrari as a company, and your requirement is e.g. to ask about the foundation date of a company, Ferrari should be an individual; if you want to talk about Ferrari as a class of all concrete cars produced by Ferrari-the-company, you probably want to model Ferrari as a class.

In case of strong ambiguity, e.g. with maximally specified car models such as "Ferrari 365 GT/4 BB" (either a model or a concrete example of that model), OWL2 is very good at modelling the ambiguity by means of the so-called "punning" mechanism: the same term holds two different interpretations.

Good luck
Aldo 

On 15 Nov 2010, at 22:59, Marcel Ferrante wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Sometimes, when we define class and individual to students, appears some doubts.
> 
> For example:
> 
> In the owl reference (http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref/) class is defined as "abstraction mechanism for grouping resources with similar characteristics"
> or class define a set of individuals with same characteristics in common.
> 
> A good exemple is car (class) and ferrari enzo (individual).
> But there is many cars that are ferrari enzo, so ferrari enzo could be a class and Jonh's ferrari enzo an individual.
> 
> So ferrari enzo could be a class and an invidividual in the same ontology ? Or ferrari enzo could be a subclass of car,
> but its diferent than a tradiconal subclass like sport car.
> 
> Is there a more clear definition of class and individual ?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Marcel
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Marcel Ferrante Silva
> +55 31 8851-9069 3785-9069
> skype: marcelferrante
> gtalk: marcelf@gmail.com
> 
> 



_____________________________________

Aldo Gangemi
Senior Researcher
Semantic Technology Lab (STLab)
Institute for Cognitive Science and Technology,
National Research Council (ISTC-CNR) 
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