Tbox quering

 
Hello everyone,

Browsing through the DL-based matchmaking bibliography and also other
sources, I realized that one way to conduct querying in a OWL ontology is to
costruct a concept with preffered characteristics and then classify it in
the taxonomy. Its subconcepts would be then the answers to the query.

This method of quering requires only the presence of the Tbox in the
ontology. To a far extend, every instance in the ontology can be modeled as
a concept and queries can be conducted as mentioned before, thus using only
Tbox reasoning techniques.

For example consider the case that one would want to express the fact that
an artifact is made of iron:

<owl:Class rdf:ID="My_Artifact">
  <rdfs:subClassOf>
   <owl:Restriction>
    <owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#isMadeOf"/>
    <owl:someValuesFrom rdf:resource="#Iron"/>
   </owl:Restriction>
  <rdfs:subClassOf>
</owl:Class>

..given that Iron is Metal:

<owl:Class rdf:ID="Iron">
  <rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#Metal" />
 </owl:Class>

...one can now retieve every metal artifact:

<owl:Restriction>
   <owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#isMadeOf"/>
    <owl:someValuesFrom rdf:resource="#Metal"/>
</owl:Restriction>


This is perfect for that kind of queries. However consider the case where we
want to know the material that "My_Artifact" is made of.

Can this be achieved? (for example by using the inverse of "isMadeOf" and
some restriction on it?)


Thanks for your time!


Dimitrios Koutsomitropoulos

Received on Wednesday, 16 June 2004 13:10:19 UTC