Re: [prov-o] How to express Involvement as as an "Abstract" class in OWL

On 23/02/2012 11:44, Luc Moreau wrote:
> Hi Khalid,
>
> Can the structure and vocabulary be in separate ontologies?
> This would allow the vocabulary to be kept as simple as possible, as 
> close to the data model as possible.
> I don't think it would be a requirement for the structure-part to be 
> OWL-RL compatible.

I haven't thought about it hard, but I guess one of the issue we may 
need to solve in that case is the properties that are common to the 
sub-classes and defined at the level of the "abstract" class. For 
example, EntityInvolvement has the property "entity" that is used to 
specify the involved entity. If we opt for the solution you are 
suggesting, then we will need to define such property for every 
descendent class that can be instantiated.

Khalid
> Thoughts?
>
> Luc
>
> On 02/23/2012 10:59 AM, Khalid Belhajjame wrote:
>>
>> In the prov-o ontology, the involvement class is used as a mean for 
>> giving a structure to the ontology. There are different types of 
>> involvement, e.g., Usage, Generation and Derivation. However, as it 
>> is, the ontology allows specifying an instance of Involvement that is 
>> not an instance of any of its sub-classes. That should not be allowed.
>>
>> In OWL, the notion of abstract class does not exist, however, one 
>> thing that can be done to avoid the above issue is to ass a 
>> constraint specifying that Involvement is equivalent to the class 
>> constructed by unionining its sub-class. While this solution is 
>> plausible, I am not sure if this constraint is OWL-RL compatible. I 
>> suspect so, but we need a confirmation.
>>
>> The same problem occurs in other cases in the ontology where the 
>> classes have been introduced for shaping the structure of the 
>> ontology, for example Element, ActivityInvolvement, EntityInvolvement 
>> and AgentInvolvement.
>>
>> khalid
>>
>

Received on Thursday, 23 February 2012 11:52:41 UTC