Re: Proposed RDF FHIR syntax feedback

> On Mar 8, 2015, at 7:00 AM, Anthony Mallia <amallia@edmondsci.com> wrote:
> 
> So I am recommending two subtypes of Ontology :
> INSTANCE ONTOLOGY (INSTANCE for short) contains Individuals, their Property assertions and their data values but may refer to contents of MODEL(s)
> MODEL ONTOLOGY (MODEL for short) contains Classes, ObjectProperties, DataProperties and Datatypes
> 
> INSTANCE and MODEL are disjoint but there can be Ontologies (neither of these subtypes) which combine them through merge or import and would be used for reasoning.

 I am not sure you can make a clean distinction between “instance ontology” and “model ontology” by the type of entities in them. What about classes that are defined as enumerations of individuals? These individuals should be part of a model sanctioned by an authority such as HL7.

Perhaps the distinction should be made using the types of assertions and not types of entities, where a “data ontology” contains assertions about individuals’ types and their property values only, and a “model ontology” contains definitions of classes, properties, datatypes, and restrictions on them. Some individuals may be in a “model ontology” if they help to define classes.

With best regards,
Samson

Received on Sunday, 8 March 2015 18:09:58 UTC