initial OWL glossary

Here is my initial glossary, based on Chris's message.

peter


		Initial OWL Glossary


Class Definition - informal term for talking about an owl:Class element and 
		   its descendant elements

Class Expression - an expression in the abstract syntax that constrains a class

Constraint - informal term for discussing the effect of a restriction

Concept - informal term for the abstractions "in the world" that classes
	  capture 

Datatype - an RDFS datatype, almost always one of the built-in non-list XML
	   Schema datatypes 

Datatype Property - alternative term for Data-valued Property
		   (used for historical reasons)

Data-valued Property - an OWL property that relates individuals to data values

Imports Closure - the information in an ontology document, 
		  plus the information in the imports closure of ontology
		  documents that are imported by the document

Individual - an instance of an OWL class, i.e., a resource that belongs to
	     the class extension of an OWL class

Individual-valued Property - an OWL property that relates individuals to other
			     individuals

Instance - a member of the class extension of an OWL class

Instance Of - the relation between an individual and a class

Object - 1 - the object of an RDF triple
       - 2 - an alternative term for individual
	     (used for historical reasons)

Object Property - alternative term for Individual-valued Property 
		  (used for historical reasons)

Ontology - a collection of information, 
	   generally including information about classes and properties
	 - the information contained in an ontology document 

Ontology Document - a web document that contains an ontology, generally
		    indicated by having an owl:Ontology element in the document

OWL Class - an RDFS class that belongs to the class extension of owl:Class

OWL Property - an RDF property that belongs to the class extension of
	       owl:Property

Property Definition - informal term for talking about an owl:ObjectProperty
		      element and or owl:DatatypeProperty and its
		      descendant elements 

Resource - an element of the RDF domain of discourse

Restriction - usually a piece of a class expression, a statement that 
	      expresses a constraint, local by default

Restriction, local - [see above]

Restriction, global - reserved for discussions of property domain and range

Set - a mathematical set




		Terms not to use

Class Member * use Instance Of instead

Knowledge Base * use Ontology instead



		Terms with XML or RDF meaning

name - as in XML Namespaces

element - 1 - as in XML
	- 2 - an element of a set

entity - as in XML

attribute - as in XML

node - as in RDF Graphs

URI reference - as in RDF 

vocabulary - a set of URI references

class - as in RDF 

type - as in RDF (rdf:type)

statement - as in RDF Graphs

Received on Thursday, 16 January 2003 14:16:44 UTC