OWL Web Ontology Language
Guide
W3C Recommendation 10 February 2004
New Version
Available: OWL 2
(Document Status Update, 12 November 2009)
The OWL Working Group has produced
a W3C Recommendation for a new version of OWL which adds
features to this 2004 version, while remaining compatible.
Please see OWL 2
Document Overview for an introduction to OWL 2 and a guide
to the OWL 2 document set.
- This version:
-
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-guide-20040210/
- Latest version:
-
http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-guide/
- Previous version:
-
http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/PR-owl-guide-20031215/
- Editors:
-
Michael K. Smith, Electronic Data Systems,
Chris Welty, IBM Research,
Deborah L. McGuinness, Stanford University,
Please refer to the errata
for this document, which may include some normative corrections.
See also translations.
Copyright © 2004 W3C®
(MIT,
ERCIM
, Keio),
All Rights Reserved. W3C
liability,
trademark,
document use and
software licensing rules apply.
The World Wide Web as it is currently constituted resembles a poorly
mapped geography. Our insight into the documents and capabilities
available are based on keyword searches, abetted by clever use of
document connectivity and usage patterns. The sheer mass of this data
is unmanageable without powerful tool support. In order to map this
terrain more precisely, computational agents require machine-readable
descriptions of the content and capabilities of Web accessible
resources. These descriptions must be in addition to the
human-readable versions of that information.
The OWL Web Ontology Language is intended to provide a language that
can be used to describe the classes and relations between them that
are inherent in Web documents and applications.
This document demonstrates the use of the OWL language to
- formalize a domain by defining classes and properties of those classes,
- define individuals and assert properties about them, and
- reason about these classes and individuals to the degree permitted
by the formal semantics of the OWL language.
The sections are organized to present an incremental definition of a
set of classes, properties and individuals, beginning with the
fundamentals and proceeding to more complex language components.
Status of This Document
"Tell me what wines I should buy to serve with each course of the
following menu. And, by the way, I don't like Sauternes."
It would be difficult today to construct a Web agent that would be
capable of performing a search for wines on the Web that satisfied
this query. Similarly, consider actually assigning a software agent
the task of making a coherent set of travel arrangements. (For more
use cases see the OWL requirements document.)
To support this sort of computation, it is necessary to go beyond
keywords and specify the meaning of the resources described on
the Web. This additional layer of interpretation captures the
semantics of the data.
The OWL Web Ontologoy Language is a language for defining and instantiating Web
ontologies. Ontology is a term borrowed from philosophy
that refers to the science of describing the kinds of entities in the
world and how they are related. An
OWL ontology may include
descriptions of classes, properties and their instances.
Given such an ontology, the
OWL formal semantics specifies how to derive its logical
consequences, i.e. facts not literally present in the ontology, but
entailed by the
semantics. These entailments may be based on
a single document or multiple distributed documents that have been
combined using defined OWL mechanisms.
This document is one component of the description of OWL, the Web Ontology
Language, being produced by the W3C Web Ontology Working Group (WebOnt).
The
Document Roadmap
section of the Overview ([Overview], 1.1)
describes each of the different parts and how they fit together.
One question that comes up when describing yet another XML/Web
standard is "What does this buy me that XML and XML Schema don't?"
There are two answers to this question.
-
An ontology differs from an XML schema in that it is a knowledge
representation, not a message format. Most industry based Web
standards consist of a combination of message formats and protocol
specifications. These formats have been given an operational
semantics, such as, "Upon receipt of this PurchaseOrder message,
transfer Amount dollars from AccountFrom to
AccountTo and ship Product." But the specification
is not designed to support reasoning outside the transaction context.
For example, we won't in general have a mechanism to conclude that
because the Product is a type of Chardonnay it must also be a
white wine.
-
One advantage of OWL ontologies will be the availability of tools that
can reason about them. Tools will provide generic support
that is not specific to the particular subject domain, which would be
the case if one were to build a system to reason about a specific
industry-standard XML schema. Building a sound and useful reasoning
system is not a simple effort. Constructing an ontology is much more
tractable. It is our expectation that many groups will embark on
ontology construction. They will benefit from third party tools based
on the formal properties of the OWL language, tools that will deliver
an assortment of capabilities that most organizations would be hard
pressed to duplicate.
The OWL language provides three increasingly expressive sublanguages
designed for use by specific communities of implementers and users.
-
OWL Lite supports those users primarily needing a classification
hierarchy and simple constraint features. For example, while OWL Lite
supports cardinality constraints, it only permits cardinality values
of 0 or 1. It should be simpler to provide tool support for
OWL Lite than its more expressive relatives, and provide a quick migration path
for thesauri and other taxonomies.
-
OWL DL supports those users
who want the maximum expressiveness without losing computational
completeness (all entailments are guaranteed to be computed) and decidability (all
computations will finish in finite time) of reasoning systems.
OWL DL includes all OWL language constructs
with restrictions such as type separation (a class can not also be an individual or
property, a property can not also be an individual or class).
OWL DL is so named due to its correspondence with
description logics [Description Logics],
a field of research that has studied a particular decidable fragment of
first order logic. OWL DL was designed to support the existing Description Logic
business segment and has desirable computational properties
for reasoning systems.
-
OWL Full is meant for
users who want maximum expressiveness and the syntactic freedom of RDF with
no computational guarantees. For example, in OWL Full a class
can be treated simultaneously as a collection of individuals
and as an individual in its own right. Another significant difference from
OWL DL is that a owl:DatatypeProperty can be marked as
an owl:InverseFunctionalProperty. OWL Full allows an ontology to
augment the meaning of the pre-defined (RDF or OWL) vocabulary. It is
unlikely that any reasoning software will be able to support every feature of
OWL Full.
Each of these sublanguages is an extension of its simpler predecessor, both
in what can be legally expressed and in what can be validly concluded.
The following set of relations hold. Their inverses do not.
- Every legal OWL Lite ontology is a legal OWL DL ontology.
- Every legal OWL DL ontology is a legal OWL Full ontology.
- Every valid OWL Lite conclusion is a valid OWL DL conclusion.
- Every valid OWL DL conclusion is a valid OWL Full conclusion.
Ontology developers adopting OWL should consider which species best
suits their needs. The choice between OWL Lite and OWL DL
depends on the extent to which users require the more expressive
restriction constructs provided by OWL DL. Reasoners for OWL
Lite will have desirable computational properties. Reasoners for
OWL DL, while dealing with a decidable sublanguage, will be subject to
higher worst-case complexity.
The choice between OWL DL and OWL Full mainly
depends on the extent to which users require the
meta-modelling facilities of RDF Schema (i.e. defining classes of
classes).
When using OWL Full as compared to OWL
DL, reasoning support is less predictable.
For more information about this issue see the
OWL semantics document.
Users migrating from RDF to OWL DL or OWL Lite need to take care to
ensure that the original RDF document complies with the constraints
imposed by OWL DL and OWL Lite. The details of these constraints are
explained in
Appendix E of the OWL Reference.
When we introduce constructs that are only permitted in OWL DL or
OWL Full, they are marked by "[OWL DL]".
In order to provide a consistent set of examples throughout the
guide, we have created a wine and
food ontology. This
is an OWL DL ontology. Some of our discussion will
focus on OWL Full capabilities and is so marked.
The wine and food ontology is a significant modification of an element of the DAML ontology library with a long
history. It was originally developed by McGuinness as a CLASSIC
description logic example, expanded to a
description logic tutorial, and expanded to an ontology
tutorial.
In this document we present examples using the
RDF/XML syntax
([RDF], 5),
assuming XML will be familiar
to the largest audience. The normative OWL exchange syntax is RDF/XML.
Note that OWL has been designed for maximal compatibility
with RDF and RDF Schema. These XML and RDF formats are part of the
OWL standard.
All of the examples presented in this document are taken from the
ontologies contained in wine.rdf and food.rdf, except those marked with ¬ in the bottom right corner.
OWL is a component of the Semantic Web
activity. This effort aims to make Web resources more readily
accessible to automated processes by adding information about the resources
that describe or provide Web content.
As the Semantic Web is inherently distributed, OWL must allow for information to be
gathered from distributed sources. This is partly done by allowing
ontologies to be related, including explicitly importing
information from other ontologies.
In addition, OWL makes an open world assumption. That is,
descriptions of resources are not confined to a single file or scope.
While class C1 may be defined originally in ontology O1, it
can be extended in other ontologies. The consequences of these
additional propositions about C1 are monotonic. New information cannot
retract previous information. New information can be contradictory,
but facts and entailments can only be added, never
deleted.
The possibility of such contradictions is something the designer of an
ontology needs to take into consideration. It is expected that tool
support will help detect such cases.
In order to write an ontology that can be interpreted
unambiguously and used by software agents we require a syntax and formal semantics for
OWL. OWL is a vocabulary extension
[RDF Semantics] of RDF.
The OWL semantics are defined in
OWL Web Ontology Language Semantics and Abstract Syntax.
Before we can use a set of terms, we need a precise indication of what
specific vocabularies are being used.
A standard initial component of an ontology includes a set of
XML namespace declarations
enclosed in an opening rdf:RDF tag.
These provide a means to unambiguously interpret identifiers and make
the rest of the ontology presentation much more readable. A typical
OWL ontology begins with a namespace declaration
similar to the following. Of course, the URIs of the defined
ontologies will not usually be w3.org references.
<rdf:RDF
xmlns ="http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-guide-20040210/wine#"
xmlns:vin ="http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-guide-20040210/wine#"
xml:base ="http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-guide-20040210/wine#"
xmlns:food="http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-guide-20040210/food#"
xmlns:owl ="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#"
xmlns:rdf ="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"
xmlns:xsd ="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#">
The first two declarations identify the namespace associated with this
ontology. The first makes it the default namespace, stating that
unprefixed qualified names refer to the current
ontology. The second identifies the namespace of the current ontology
with the prefix vin:. The third identifies the base URI for
this document (see
below ). The fourth identifies the namespace of
the supporting food ontology with the prefix food:.
The fifth namespace declaration says that in this document, elements
prefixed with owl: should be understood as referring to
things drawn from the namespace called
http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#. This is a conventional
OWL declaration, used to introduce the OWL vocabulary.
OWL depends on constructs defined by RDF, RDFS, and XML Schema datatypes.
In this document, the rdf: prefix refers to things drawn from
the namespace called
http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#. The next two
namespace declarations make similar statements about the RDF Schema
(rdfs:) and XML Schema datatype (xsd:) namespaces.
As an aid to writing lengthy URLs it can often be
useful to provide a set of entity definitions in a document type
declaration (DOCTYPE) that precedes the ontology definitions. The names defined by the namespace
declarations only have significance as parts of XML tags. Attribute
values are not namespace sensitive. But in OWL we frequently
reference ontology identifiers using attribute values. They can be
written down in their fully expanded form, for
example "http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-guide-20040210/wine#merlot". Alternatively,
abbreviations can be defined using an ENTITY definition, for example:
<!DOCTYPE rdf:RDF [
<!ENTITY vin "http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-guide-20040210/wine#" >
<!ENTITY food "http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-guide-20040210/food#" > ]>
After this pair of ENTITY declarations, we could write the value
"&vin;merlot" and it would expand to
"http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-guide-20040210/wine#merlot".
Perhaps more importantly, the rdf:RDF namespace declarations
can then be simplified so that changes made to the
entity declarations will propagate through the ontology consistently.
<rdf:RDF
xmlns ="&vin;"
xmlns:vin ="&vin;"
xml:base ="&vin;"
xmlns:food="&food;"
xmlns:owl ="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#"
xmlns:rdf ="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"
xmlns:xsd ="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#">
Once namespaces are established we normally include a
collection of assertions about the ontology grouped under
an owl:Ontology tag. These tags support
such critical housekeeping tasks as comments, version control and
inclusion of other ontologies.
<owl:Ontology rdf:about="">
<rdfs:comment>An example OWL ontology</rdfs:comment>
<owl:priorVersion rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/PR-owl-guide-20031215/wine"/>
<owl:imports rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-guide-20040210/food"/>
<rdfs:label>Wine Ontology</rdfs:label>
...
Note that we use '...' to indicate that there is additional text that
has been elided for purposes of the example.
The owl:Ontology element is a place to collect much of
the OWL meta-data for the document. It does not guarantee that the
document describes an ontology in the traditional sense.
In some communities, ontologies
are not about individuals but only the classes and properties that define a domain.
When using OWL to describe a collection of instance data
the owl:Ontology tag may be needed in order to record version
information and to import the definitions that the document depends on.
Thus, in OWL the term ontology has been broadened to include
instance data (see above).
The rdf:about attribute provides a name or reference for the ontology.
Where the value of the attribute is "", the standard case, the
name of the ontology is the base URI of the owl:Ontology element.
Typically, this is the URI of the document containing the ontology.
An exception to this is a context that makes use of xml:base
which may set the base URI for an element to something other than the
URI of the current document.
rdfs:comment provides the obvious needed capability
to annotate an ontology.
owl:priorVersion is a standard tag intended to provide
hooks for version control systems working with ontologies. Ontology
versioning is discussed further below.
owl:imports
provides an include-style mechanism.
owl:imports
takes a single argument, identified by the rdf:resource attribute.
Importing another ontology brings the entire set of assertions
provided by that ontology into the current ontology.
In order to make best use of this imported ontology it would normally
be coordinated with a namespace declaration. Notice the distinction
between these two mechanisms. The namespace declarations provide
a convenient means to reference names defined in other OWL
ontologies.
Conceptually, owl:imports is provided to indicate your
intention to include the assertions of the target ontology.
Importing another ontology, O2, will also import all of the
ontologies that O2 imports.
Note that owl:imports may not always succeed. As you would
expect when dealing with the Semantic Web, access to resources
distributed across the Web may not always be possible. Tools will
respond to this situation in an implementation defined manner.
Note that in order to use the OWL vocabulary you do not need to
import the owl.rdf
ontology. In fact, such an import is not recommended.
One common set of additional tags that could reasonably be included
here are some of the standard Dublin
Core metadata tags. The subset includes those that take simple
types or strings as values. Examples include Title, Creator,
Description, Publisher, and Date (see
RDF declarations).
Properties that are used as annotations should be declared using
owl:AnnotationProperty. E.g.
<owl:AnnotationProperty rdf:about="&dc;creator" />
OWL provides several other mechanisms to tie the current ontology and
imported ontologies together (see ontology
mapping).
We also include an rdfs:label to
support a natural language label for our ontology.
The ontology header definition is closed with
the following tag.
</owl:Ontology>
This prelude is followed by the actual definitions that
make up the ontology and is ultimately closed by
</rdf:RDF>
OWL's ability to express ontological information about instances
appearing in multiple documents supports linking of data from diverse
sources in a principled way. The underlying semantics provides
support for inferences over this data that may yield unexpected
results. In particular, the ability to express equivalences using
owl:sameAs can be used to state that seemingly
different individuals are actually the same.
Owl:InverseFunctionalProperty can also be used to link
individuals together.
For example, if a property such as "SocialSecurityNumber" is an
owl:InverseFunctionalProperty, then two separate individuals
could be inferred to be identical based on having the same value of
that property. When individuals are determined to be the same by such
means, information about them from different sources can be
merged. This aggregation can be used to determine facts that
are not directly represented in any one source.
The ability of the Semantic Web to link information from multiple
sources is a desirable and powerful feature that can be used in many
applications.
However, the capability to merge data from multiple sources, combined
with the inferential power of OWL, does have potential for abuse.
Users of OWL should be alert to the potential privacy implications.
Detailed security solutions were considered out of scope for the
Working Group. A number of organizations are addressing these
issues with a variety of security and preference solutions.
See for example
SAML and
P3P.
Most of the elements of an OWL ontology concern classes, properties,
instances of classes, and relationships between these instances.
This section presents the language components essential to introducing
these elements.
Many uses of an ontology will depend on the ability to reason
about individuals. In order to do this in a useful fashion we need to
have a mechanism to describe the classes that individuals belong to
and the properties that they inherit by virtue of class membership.
We can always assert specific properties about individuals, but much
of the power of ontologies comes from class-based reasoning.
Sometimes we want to emphasize the distinction between a class as an
object and a class as a set containing elements.
We call the set of individuals that are members of a class
the extension of the class.
The most basic concepts in a domain should correspond
to classes that are the roots of various
taxonomic trees. Every individual in the OWL world is a member of
the class
owl:Thing. Thus each user-defined class
is implicitly a subclass of owl:Thing. Domain specific root classes are
defined by simply declaring a named class.
OWL also defines the empty class, owl:Nothing.
For our sample wines domain, we create three root classes: Winery,
Region, and ConsumableThing.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Winery"/>
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Region"/>
<owl:Class rdf:ID="ConsumableThing"/>
Note that we have only said that there exist classes that have been
given these names, indicated by the 'rdf:ID=' syntax. Formally, we
know almost nothing about these classes other than their existence,
despite the use of familiar English terms as labels. And while the
classes exist, they may have no members. For all we know at the
moment, these classes might as well have been called Thing1,
Thing2, and Thing3.
It is important to remember that definitions may be incremental and distributed.
In particular, we will have more to say about Winery later.
The syntax rdf:ID="Region" is used to introduce a
name, as part of its definition. This is the
rdf:ID
attribute ([RDF], 7.2.22) that is like the familiar ID attribute defined by XML.
Within this document, the Region class can now be referred to using
#Region, e.g. rdf:resource="#Region".
Other ontologies may reference this
name using its complete form,
"http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-guide-20040210/wine#Region".
Another form of reference
uses the syntax rdf:about="#Region" to extend the definition of a
resource.
This use of the rdf:about="&ont;#x" syntax is a critical element
in the creation of a distributed ontology. It permits the extension
of the imported definition of x without modifying the
original document and supports the incremental construction of a larger ontology.
It is now possible to refer to the classes we defined in other OWL
constructs using their given identifier. For the first class, within
this document, we can use the relative identifier, #Winery.
Other documents may need to reference this class as well. The most
reasonable way to do so is to provide namespace and entity definitions
that include the defining document as a source:
...
<!ENTITY vin "http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-guide-20040210/wine#" >
<!ENTITY food "http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-guide-20040210/food#" >
...
<rdf:RDF xmlns:vin ="http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-guide-20040210/wine#"
xmlns:food="http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-guide-20040210/food#" ... >
...
Given these definitions we can refer to the winery class either
using the XML tag vin:Winery or the attribute value &vin;Winery.
More literally, it is always possible to reference a resource using its full URI,
here http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-guide-20040210/wine#Winery.
The fundamental taxonomic constructor for
classes is rdfs:subClassOf.
It relates a more specific class to a more general
class. If X is a subclass of Y, then every instance of X is also
an instance of Y.
The rdfs:subClassOf relation is transitive. If X is a subclass of Y
and Y a subclass of Z then X is a subclass of Z.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="PotableLiquid">
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#ConsumableThing" />
...
</owl:Class>
We define PotableLiquid (liquids suitable for drinking) to
be a subclass of ConsumableThing.
In the world of Web-based ontologies, both of these classes
can be defined in a separate ontology that would provide the basic
building blocks for a wide variety of food and drink ontologies, which
is what we have done - they are defined in the
food ontology, which
is imported into the wine ontology.
The food ontology includes a number of classes, for example
Food, EdibleThing, MealCourse, and
Shellfish, that do not belong in a collection of wine facts,
but must be connected to the wine vocabulary if we are going to
perform useful reasoning. Food and wine are mutually
dependent, in order to satisfy our need to identify wine/food matches.
A class definition has two parts: a name introduction or reference
and a list of restrictions. Each of the immediate contained
expressions in the class definition further restricts the instances of
the defined class. Instances of the class belong to the intersection of
the restrictions. (Though see the details of
owl:equivalentClass.)
So far we have only seen examples that include a single restriction,
forcing the new class to be a subclass of some other named class.
At this point it is possible to create a simple (and incomplete)
definition for the class Wine. Wine is a
PotableLiquid. We also define Pasta as an
EdibleThing.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Wine">
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&food;PotableLiquid"/>
<rdfs:label xml:lang="en">wine</rdfs:label>
<rdfs:label xml:lang="fr">vin</rdfs:label>
...
</owl:Class>
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Pasta">
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#EdibleThing" />
...
</owl:Class>
The rdfs:label entry provides an optional human readable
name for this class. Presentation tools can make use of it.
The "lang" attribute provides support for multiple languages. A label
is like a comment and contributes nothing to the logical
interpretation of an ontology.
Our wine definition is still very incomplete. We know nothing about
wines except that they are things and potable liquids, but we have
sufficient information to create and reason about individuals.
In addition to classes, we want to be able to describe their members.
We normally think of these as individuals in our universe of things.
An individual is minimally introduced by declaring it to be a member
of a class.
<Region rdf:ID="CentralCoastRegion" />
Note that the following is identical in meaning to the
example above.
<owl:Thing rdf:ID="CentralCoastRegion" />
<owl:Thing rdf:about="#CentralCoastRegion">
<rdf:type rdf:resource="#Region"/>
</owl:Thing>
rdf:type is an RDF property that ties an individual to a class
of which it is a member.
There are a couple of points to be made here. First,
we have decided that CentralCoastRegion (a specific area) is
member of Region, the class containing all geographical regions.
Second, there is no requirement in the two-part example that the two
elements need to be adjacent to one another, or even in the same
file (though the names would need to be extended with a URI in such a
case). We design Web ontologies to be distributed. They can be
imported and augmented, creating derived ontologies.
In order to have available a few more classes for the
properties introduced in the next sections, we define a branch
of the Grape taxonomy, with an individual denoting the
Cabernet Sauvignon grape varietal. Grapes are defined in the food ontology:
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Grape">
...
</owl:Class>
And then in the wine ontology we have:
<owl:Class rdf:ID="WineGrape">
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&food;Grape" />
</owl:Class>
<WineGrape rdf:ID="CabernetSauvignonGrape" />
As discussed in the next section,
CabernetSauvignonGrape is an individual because it denotes a
single grape varietal.
There are important issues regarding the distinction between a class and
an individual in OWL. A class is simply a name and collection of properties
that describe a set of individuals. Individuals are the members of those sets.
Thus classes should correspond to naturally occurring sets of things in a domain
of discourse, and individuals should correspond to actual entities that can be grouped
into these classes.
In building ontologies, this distinction is frequently blurred in two ways:
-
Levels of representation: In certain contexts something
that is obviously a class can itself be considered an instance of something else. For
example, in the wine ontology we have the notion of a Grape, which is
intended to denote the set of all grape varietals.
CabernetSauvingonGrape is
an example instance of this class, as it denotes the actual grape varietal
called Cabernet Sauvignon.
However, CabernetSauvignonGrape could itself be considered a class, the set of all
actual Cabernet Sauvignon grapes.
-
Subclass vs. instance: It is very easy to confuse the
instance-of relationship with the subclass relationship.
For example, it may seem arbitrary to choose to make CabernetSauvignonGrape
an individual that is an instance of Grape, as opposed to a subclass of Grape.
This is not an arbitrary
decision. The Grape class denotes the set of all
grape varietals, and therefore any subclass of Grape should denote a subset of these
varietals. Thus, CabernetSauvignonGrape should be considered an
instance of Grape, and not a subclass. It does not
describe a subset of Grape varietals, it is a grape varietal.
Note that the same distinction arises with the treatment of the
Wine class. The Wine class actually denotes the set
of all varieties of wine, not the set of actual bottles that
someone may purchase.
In an alternate ontology, each instance of Wine in the current
ontology could instead designate a class
consisting of all the bottles of wine of that type. It is easy to
imagine an information system, such as an inventory system for a wine
merchant, that needs to consider individual bottles of wine.
The wine ontology as it currently exists would require the ability to
treat classes as instances in order to support such an interpretation.
Note that OWL Full permits such expressivity,
allowing us to treat an instance of a wine variety simultaneously
as a class whose instances are bottles of wine.
In a similar vein, the wines produced by wineries in specific years
are considered vintages. In order to represent the notion of a
vintage, we must determine where it fits in the current ontology. An
instance of the Wine class, as discussed above, represents a
single variety of wine produced by a single winery, for example
FormanChardonnay.
Adding that the wine produced in the year 2000 is considered a
vintage
poses a challenge, because we don't have the ability to represent a
subset of a given wine individual. This vintage is not a new
variety of wine, it is a special subset of the wine - that produced in
the year 2000.
An option would be to use OWL Full and treat the wine instances as
classes with subclasses (subsets) denoting vintages. Another option is
to use a workaround and to consider Vintage as a separate class whose
instances have a relationship to the Wine they are a vintage of.
For example, FormanChardonnay2000 is an
individual Vintage with a vintageOf property whose value is
the Wine, FormanChardonnay. We define the
Vintage class below.
The point of this
discussion is to note that the development of an ontology should be
firmly driven by the intended usage. These issues also underlie
one major difference between OWL Full and OWL DL. OWL Full
allows the use of classes as instances and OWL DL does not.
The wine ontology is designed to work in OWL DL, and
as a result individuals like FormanChardonnay are not
simultaneously treated as classes.
This world of classes and individuals would be pretty uninteresting
if we could only define taxonomies.
Properties let us assert
general facts about the members of classes and specific facts about
individuals.
3.2.1. Defining Properties
ObjectProperty, DatatypeProperty, rdfs:subPropertyOf,
rdfs:domain, rdfs:range
A property is a binary relation.
Two types of properties are distinguished:
-
datatype properties,
relations between instances of
classes and RDF literals and XML Schema datatypes
- object properties,
relations between instances of two classes.
Note that the name object property is not intended to reflect a
connection with the RDF term rdf:object
([RDF], 5.3.4).
When we define a property
there are a number of ways to restrict the relation.
The domain and range can be specified. The property can be defined to
be a specialization (subproperty) of an existing property. More elaborate
restrictions are possible and are described
later.
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="madeFromGrape">
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Wine"/>
<rdfs:range rdf:resource="#WineGrape"/>
</owl:ObjectProperty>
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="course">
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Meal" />
<rdfs:range rdf:resource="#MealCourse" />
</owl:ObjectProperty>
In OWL, a sequence of elements without an explicit operator
represents an implicit conjunction.
The property madeFromGrape has a domain of Wine
and a range of WineGrape. That is, it relates
instances of the class Wine to instances of the class
WineGrape. Multiple domains mean that the
domain of the property is the intersection of
the identified classes (and similarly for range).
Similarly, the property course ties a Meal to a MealCourse.
Note that the use of range and domain information in OWL is different
from type information in a programming language. Among other things, types
are used to check consistency in a programming language. In OWL, a range may be
used to infer a type. For example, given:
<owl:Thing rdf:ID="LindemansBin65Chardonnay">
<madeFromGrape rdf:resource="#ChardonnayGrape" />
</owl:Thing> ¬
we can infer that LindemansBin65Chardonnay is a wine because
the domain of madeFromGrape is Wine.
Properties, like classes, can be arranged in a hierarchy.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="WineDescriptor" />
<owl:Class rdf:ID="WineColor">
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#WineDescriptor" />
...
</owl:Class>
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="hasWineDescriptor">
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Wine" />
<rdfs:range rdf:resource="#WineDescriptor" />
</owl:ObjectProperty>
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="hasColor">
<rdfs:subPropertyOf rdf:resource="#hasWineDescriptor" />
<rdfs:range rdf:resource="#WineColor" />
...
</owl:ObjectProperty>
WineDescriptor properties relate wines to their color and components of their
taste, including sweetness, body, and flavor. hasColor is a
subproperty of the hasWineDescriptor property, with its range
further restricted to WineColor. The rdfs:subPropertyOf
relation in this case means that anything with a hasColor
property with value X also has a hasWineDescriptor property
with value X.
Next we introduce the locatedIn property, which relates things to
the regions they are located in.
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="locatedIn">
...
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#Thing" />
<rdfs:range rdf:resource="#Region" />
</owl:ObjectProperty>
Notice how the domain and range of locatedIn are defined.
The domain permits anything to be located in a region, including
regions themselves. And the
transitive
composition of this relation
essentially creates a network of geographically included subregions
and things. Those things that have nothing located in them
can be of any class, while those that contain others must be
regions.
It is now possible to expand the definition of Wine to
include the notion that a wine is
made from at least one WineGrape.
As with property definitions, class definitions have multiple subparts that are
implicitly conjoined.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Wine">
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&food;PotableLiquid"/>
<rdfs:subClassOf>
<owl:Restriction>
<owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#madeFromGrape"/>
<owl:minCardinality rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">1</owl:minCardinality>
</owl:Restriction>
</rdfs:subClassOf>
...
</owl:Class>
The highlighted subclass restriction above
<owl:Restriction>
<owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#madeFromGrape"/>
<owl:minCardinality rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">1</owl:minCardinality>
</owl:Restriction>
defines an unnamed class that represents the set of things
with at least one madeFromGrape property.
We call these anonymous
classes. Including this restriction in the Wine
class definition body states that things that are wines are also
members of this anonymous class. That is, every individual wine must participate
in at least one madeFromGrape relation.
We can now describe the class of Vintages, discussed previously.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Vintage">
<rdfs:subClassOf>
<owl:Restriction>
<owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#vintageOf"/>
<owl:minCardinality rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">1</owl:minCardinality>
</owl:Restriction>
</rdfs:subClassOf>
</owl:Class> ¬
The property vintageOf ties a Vintage to a
Wine.
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="vintageOf">
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Vintage" />
<rdfs:range rdf:resource="#Wine" />
</owl:ObjectProperty> ¬
We relate Vintages to their years in the next section.
We distinguish
properties according to whether they relate individuals to individuals
(object properties) or individuals to datatypes (datatype properties).
Datatype properties may range over RDF literals or
simple types defined in accordance with
XML Schema datatypes.
OWL uses most of the built-in XML
Schema datatypes. References to these datatypes are by
means of the URI reference for the datatype,
http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema. The following datatypes are
recommended for use with OWL:
| xsd:string | xsd:normalizedString | xsd:boolean |
| xsd:decimal | xsd:float | xsd:double |
| xsd:integer | xsd:nonNegativeInteger | xsd:positiveInteger |
| xsd:nonPositiveInteger | xsd:negativeInteger |
| xsd:long | xsd:int | xsd:short | xsd:byte |
| xsd:unsignedLong | xsd:unsignedInt | xsd:unsignedShort | xsd:unsignedByte |
| xsd:hexBinary | xsd:base64Binary |
| xsd:dateTime | xsd:time | xsd:date | xsd:gYearMonth |
| xsd:gYear | xsd:gMonthDay | xsd:gDay | xsd:gMonth |
| xsd:anyURI | xsd:token | xsd:language |
| xsd:NMTOKEN | xsd:Name | xsd:NCName |
The above datatypes, plus rdfs:Literal, form the built-in OWL datatypes.
All OWL reasoners are required to support the xsd:integer
and xsd:string datatypes.
Other built-in XML Schema datatypes may
be used in OWL Full, but with caveats described in the
OWL Semantics and Abstract Syntax documentation.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="VintageYear" />
<owl:DatatypeProperty rdf:ID="yearValue">
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#VintageYear" />
<rdfs:range rdf:resource="&xsd;positiveInteger"/>
</owl:DatatypeProperty>
The yearValue property relates VintageYears to positive
integer values.
We introduce the hasVintageYear property, which relates a Vintage to a
VintageYear below.
The
OWL Reference ([Reference], 6.2) describes the use of owl:oneOf and
rdf:List and rdf:rest to define an enumerated
datatype. The example shows how to construct the owl:DatatypeProperty,
tennisGameScore, with a range equal to the elements of the list of integer
values {0, 15, 30, 40}.
First we describe Region and Winery individuals, and then
we define our first wine, a Cabernet Sauvignon.
<Region rdf:ID="SantaCruzMountainsRegion">
<locatedIn rdf:resource="#CaliforniaRegion" />
</Region>
<Winery rdf:ID="SantaCruzMountainVineyard" />
<CabernetSauvignon
rdf:ID="SantaCruzMountainVineyardCabernetSauvignon" >
<locatedIn rdf:resource="#SantaCruzMountainsRegion"/>
<hasMaker rdf:resource="#SantaCruzMountainVineyard" />
</CabernetSauvignon>
This is still incomplete. There are other aspects of the wine flavor
that are defined in the full ontology. But the pieces are falling
together. We could begin reasoning about what menu items in our food
ontology this wine might
accompany. We know from the definition above that the Santa Cruz
Mountain Vineyard makes it.
Because it is a Cabernet Sauvignon (see wine.rdf),
we know it is a dry, red wine.
Datatype properties can be added to individuals in a similar
fashion. Below we describe an instance of VintageYear and tie it to a
specific value of type &xsd:positiveInteger.
<VintageYear rdf:ID="Year1998">
<yearValue rdf:datatype="&xsd;positiveInteger">1998</yearValue>
</VintageYear>
The next few sections describe the mechanisms used to further specify
properties. It is possible to specify property
characteristics, which provides a powerful mechanism for enhanced
reasoning about a property.
3.3.1. TransitiveProperty
If a property, P, is specified as transitive then for any x, y, and z:
P(x,y) and P(y,z) implies P(x,z)
The property locatedIn is transitive.
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="locatedIn">
<rdf:type rdf:resource="&owl;TransitiveProperty" />
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="&owl;Thing" />
<rdfs:range rdf:resource="#Region" />
</owl:ObjectProperty>
<Region rdf:ID="SantaCruzMountainsRegion">
<locatedIn rdf:resource="#CaliforniaRegion" />
</Region>
<Region rdf:ID="CaliforniaRegion">
<locatedIn rdf:resource="#USRegion" />
</Region>
Because the SantaCruzMountainsRegion is locatedIn the
CaliforniaRegion, then it must also be locatedIn the
USRegion, since locatedIn is transitive.
3.3.2. SymmetricProperty
If a property, P, is tagged as
symmetric then for any x and y:
P(x,y) iff P(y,x)
The property adjacentRegion is symmetric, while locatedIn is not.
To be more precise, locatedIn is not intended to be
symmetric. Nothing in the wine ontology at present prevents it from being symmetric.
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="adjacentRegion">
<rdf:type rdf:resource="&owl;SymmetricProperty" />
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Region" />
<rdfs:range rdf:resource="#Region" />
</owl:ObjectProperty>
<Region rdf:ID="MendocinoRegion">
<locatedIn rdf:resource="#CaliforniaRegion" />
<adjacentRegion rdf:resource="#SonomaRegion" />
</Region>
The MendocinoRegion is adjacent to the SonomaRegion
and vice-versa. The MendocinoRegion is located in the
CaliforniaRegion but not vice versa.
3.3.3. FunctionalProperty
If a property, P, is tagged as functional then for all x, y, and z:
P(x,y) and P(x,z) implies y = z
In our wine ontology, hasVintageYear
is functional. A wine has a unique vintage year.
That is, a given individual Vintage can only be associated with a
single year using the hasVintageYear property.
It is not a requirement of a owl:FunctionalProperty
that all elements of the domain have values. See the discussion of
Vintage cardinality.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="VintageYear" />
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="hasVintageYear">
<rdf:type rdf:resource="&owl;FunctionalProperty" />
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Vintage" />
<rdfs:range rdf:resource="#VintageYear" />
</owl:ObjectProperty>
3.3.4. inverseOf
If a property, P1, is tagged as the owl:inverseOf P2, then for
all x and y:
P1(x,y) iff P2(y,x)
Note that the syntax for owl:inverseOf takes a property name as an argument.
A iff B means (A implies B) and (B implies A).
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="hasMaker">
<rdf:type rdf:resource="&owl;FunctionalProperty" />
</owl:ObjectProperty>
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="producesWine">
<owl:inverseOf rdf:resource="#hasMaker" />
</owl:ObjectProperty>
Wines have makers, which in the definition of Wine
are restricted to Winerys. Then each
Winery produces the set of wines that identify it as maker.
3.3.5. InverseFunctionalProperty
If a property, P, is tagged as InverseFunctional then for all x, y and z:
P(y,x) and P(z,x) implies y = z
Notice that producesWine in the preceding section is inverse
functional. The reason is that the inverse of a functional property
must be inverse functional. We could have defined hasMaker
and producesWine as follows and achieved the identical
effect as the preceding example.
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="hasMaker" />
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="producesWine">
<rdf:type rdf:resource="&owl;InverseFunctionalProperty" />
<owl:inverseOf rdf:resource="#hasMaker" />
</owl:ObjectProperty> ¬
Think of the elements of the range in an inverse functional property
as defining a unique key in the database sense.
owl:InverseFunctional implies that the elements of the range
provide a unique identifier for each element of the domain.
In OWL Full, we can tag a DatatypeProperty as
inverseFunctional. This permits us to identify a string as
a unique key. In OWL DL literals are disjoint from owl:Thing, which
is why OWL DL does not permit InverseFunctional to be applied to
DatatypeProperty.
3.4. Property Restrictions
In addition to designating property characteristics, it is possible to
further constrain the range of a property in specific contexts in a
variety of ways.
We do this with property restrictions. The various
forms described below can only be used within the context of an owl:Restriction.
The owl:onProperty element indicates the restricted property.
3.4.1. allValuesFrom, someValuesFrom
We have already seen one way to restrict the types of the elements that
make up a property. The mechanisms to
date have been global in that they apply to all
instances of the property. These next two, allValuesFrom and
someValuesFrom, are local to their containing class definition.
The owl:allValuesFrom restriction requires that for every instance of
the class that has instances of the specified property, the
values of the property are all members of the class indicated by the
owl:allValuesFrom clause.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Wine">
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&food;PotableLiquid" />
...
<rdfs:subClassOf>
<owl:Restriction>
<owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#hasMaker" />
<owl:allValuesFrom rdf:resource="#Winery" />
</owl:Restriction>
</rdfs:subClassOf>
...
</owl:Class>
The maker of a Wine must be a Winery.
The allValuesFrom restriction is on the hasMaker property of
this Wine class only. Makers of Cheese are
not constrained by this local restriction.
owl:someValuesFrom is similar. If we
replaced owl:allValuesFrom with owl:someValuesFrom
in the example above, it would mean that at least one of the
hasMaker properties of a Wine must point to an
individual that is a Winery.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Wine">
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&food;PotableLiquid" />
<rdfs:subClassOf>
<owl:Restriction>
<owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#hasMaker" />
<owl:someValuesFrom rdf:resource="#Winery" />
</owl:Restriction>
</rdfs:subClassOf>
...
</owl:Class> ¬
The difference between the two formulations is the difference between
a universal and existential quantification.
| Relation | Implications |
|---|
| allValuesFrom | For all wines, if they have
makers, all the makers are wineries. |
| someValuesFrom | For all wines, they have at least one maker that is a winery. |
The first does not require a wine to have a maker. If it does have one or more, they
must all be wineries. The second requires that there be at least one maker
that is a winery, but there may be makers that are not wineries.
We have already seen examples of cardinality constraints. To date,
they have been assertions about minimum cardinality. Even more
straight-forward is owl:cardinality, which permits the
specification of exactly the number of elements in a relation.
For example, we specify Vintage to be a class with
exactly one VintageYear.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Vintage">
<rdfs:subClassOf>
<owl:Restriction>
<owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#hasVintageYear"/>
<owl:cardinality rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">1</owl:cardinality>
</owl:Restriction>
</rdfs:subClassOf>
</owl:Class>
We specified hasVintageYear to be a functional property, which
is the same as saying that every Vintage has at most one VintageYear.
This application of that property to Vintage using the
cardinality restriction asserts
something stronger, that every Vintage has
exactly one VintageYear.
Cardinality expressions with values limited to 0 or 1 are part of OWL Lite.
This permits the user to indicate 'at least one', 'no more than one',
and 'exactly one'.
Positive integer values other than 0 and 1 are permitted in OWL DL.
owl:maxCardinality can be used to specify an upper bound.
owl:minCardinality can be used to specify a lower bound.
In combination, the two can be used to limit the property's cardinality to
a numeric interval.
hasValue allows us to specify classes based on the
existence of particular property values. Hence,
an individual will be a member of such a class whenever at least one
of its property values is equal to the hasValue resource.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Burgundy">
...
<rdfs:subClassOf>
<owl:Restriction>
<owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#hasSugar" />
<owl:hasValue rdf:resource="#Dry" />
</owl:Restriction>
</rdfs:subClassOf>
</owl:Class>
Here we declare that all Burgundy wines are dry. That is, their
hasSugar property must have at least one value that is equal
to Dry.
As for allValuesFrom and
someValuesFrom, this is a local restriction. It holds for
hasSugar as applied to Burgundy.
In order for ontologies to have the maximum impact, they need to be
widely shared. In order to minimize the intellectual effort involved
in developing an ontology they need to be re-used. In the best of all
possible worlds they need to be composed. For example, you might adopt
a date ontology from one source and a physical location ontology from
another and then extend the notion of location to include the time
period during which it holds.
It is important to realize that much of the effort of developing an
ontology is devoted to hooking together classes and properties in
ways that maximize implications. We want simple assertions about
class membership to
have broad and useful implications. This is the hardest part of
ontology development. If you can find an existing ontology that has
already undergone extensive use and refinement, it makes sense to
adopt it.
It will be challenging to merge a collection of ontologies. Tool
support will almost certainly be required to maintain consistency.
To tie together a set of component ontologies as part of a
third it is frequently useful to be able to indicate that a particular
class or property in one ontology is equivalent to a class or property
in a second
ontology. This capability must be used with care.
If the combined ontologies are contradictory (all A's
are B's vs. all A's are not B's) there will be no extension (no
individuals and relations) that satisfies the resulting combination.
In the food ontology we want to link wine features in the descriptions
of dining courses back to the wine ontology. One way to do this is by
defining a class in the food ontology (&food;Wine) and then
declaring it equivalent to an existing wine class in the wine ontology.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Wine">
<owl:equivalentClass rdf:resource="&vin;Wine"/>
</owl:Class>
The property owl:equivalentClass is used to indicate that two classes have
precisely the same instances. Note that in OWL DL, classes simply denote sets
of individuals, and are not individuals themselves. In OWL Full, however,
we can use owl:sameAs
between two classes to indicate that
they are identical in every way.
Of course the example above is somewhat contrived, since we can always
use &vin;Wine anywhere we would use #Wine and get
the same effect without redefinition. A more likely use would be in a
case were we depend on two independently developed ontologies, and
note that they use the URI's O1:foo and O2:bar to
reference the same class. owl:equivalentClass could be used to
collapse these together so that the entailments from the two
ontologies are combined.
We have already seen that class expressions can be the targets
of rdfs:subClassOf constructors. They can also be the target of
owl:equivalentClass. Again, this avoids the need to
contrive names for every class expression and provides a powerful
definitional capability based on satisfaction of a property.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="TexasThings">
<owl:equivalentClass>
<owl:Restriction>
<owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#locatedIn" />
<owl:someValuesFrom rdf:resource="#TexasRegion" />
</owl:Restriction>
</owl:equivalentClass>
</owl:Class> ¬
TexasThings are exactly those things located in the
Texas region. The difference between using owl:equivalentClass here
and using rdfs:subClassOf is the difference between a necessary
condition and a necessary and sufficient condition. With
subClassOf, things that are located in Texas are not
necessarily TexasThings. But, using owl:equivalentClass, if
something is located in Texas, then it must be in the class of
TexasThings.
| Relation | Implications |
|---|
| subClassOf | TexasThings(x) implies locatedIn(x,y) and TexasRegion(y) |
| equivalentClass | TexasThings(x) implies
locatedIn(x,y) and TexasRegion(y)
locatedIn(x,y) and
TexasRegion(y) implies TexasThings(x) |
To tie together properties in a similar fashion, we use
owl:equivalentProperty.
This mechanism is similar to that for classes, but declares two
individuals to be identical. An example would be:
<Wine rdf:ID="MikesFavoriteWine">
<owl:sameAs rdf:resource="#StGenevieveTexasWhite" />
</Wine> ¬
This example does not have great utility. About all we learn from this is
that Mike likes an inexpensive local wine. A more typical use of
sameAs would be to equate individuals defined in
different documents to one another, as part of unifying two ontologies.
This brings up an important point. OWL does not have a
unique
name assumption. Just because two names are different does not
mean they refer to different individuals.
In the example above, we asserted identity between two distinct
names. But it is just as possible for this sort of identity to be
inferred.
Remember the implications that can be derived from a functional
property. Given that hasMaker is functional, the following
is not necessarily a conflict.
<owl:Thing rdf:about="#BancroftChardonnay">
<hasMaker rdf:resource="#Bancroft" />
<hasMaker rdf:resource="#Beringer" />
</owl:Thing> ¬
Unless this conflicts with other information in our ontology, it simply means
that Bancroft = Beringer.
Note that using sameAs to equate two classes
is not the same as equating them with equivalentClass; instead, it causes the
the classes to be interpreted as individuals, and is therefore sufficient
to categorize an ontology as OWL Full.
In OWL Full sameAs may be used to equate
anything: a class and an individual, a property and a class, etc., and causes both
arguments to be interpreted as individuals.
This mechanism provides the opposite effect from sameAs.
<WineSugar rdf:ID="Dry" />
<WineSugar rdf:ID="Sweet">
<owl:differentFrom rdf:resource="#Dry"/>
</WineSugar>
<WineSugar rdf:ID="OffDry">
<owl:differentFrom rdf:resource="#Dry"/>
<owl:differentFrom rdf:resource="#Sweet"/>
</WineSugar>
This is one way to assert that these three values are mutually distinct.
There will be cases where it is important to ensure such distinct
identities. Without these assertions we could describe a wine that was
both Dry and Sweet. We have
stated that the hasSugar property applied to a wine has no more than
one value. If we erred, and asserted that a wine was both Dry and
Sweet, without the differentFrom elements above,
this would imply that Dry and Sweet are identical.
With the elements above, we would instead get a contradiction.
A more convenient mechanism exists to define a set of mutually
distinct individuals. The following asserts that Red,
White, and Rose are pairwise distinct.
<owl:AllDifferent>
<owl:distinctMembers rdf:parseType="Collection">
<vin:WineColor rdf:about="#Red" />
<vin:WineColor rdf:about="#White" />
<vin:WineColor rdf:about="#Rose" />
</owl:distinctMembers>
</owl:AllDifferent>
Note that owl:distinctMembers can only be used
in combination with owl:AllDifferent
In the wine ontology we provide an owl:AllDifferent assertion
for all of the WineDescriptors. We also state that
the Winerys are all different. If we wanted to add a new
winery in some other ontology and assert that it was disjoint from all
of those that have already been defined, we would need to cut and
paste the original owl:AllDifferent assertion and add the new
maker to the list. There is not a simpler way to extend an
owl:AllDifferent collection in OWL DL. In OWL Full, using
RDF triples and the rdf:List constructs, other approaches are possible.
OWL provides additional constructors with which to form classes. These
constructors can be used to create so-called class
expressions. OWL supports the basic set operations, namely
union, intersection and complement. These are named
owl:unionOf, owl:intersectionOf, and owl:complementOf,
respectively. Additionally, classes can be
enumerated.
Class extensions can be stated explicitly by means of the
oneOf constructor.
And it is possible to assert that class extensions must be disjoint.
Note that Class expressions can be nested without requiring the creation
of names for every intermediate class.
This allows the use of set operations to build up complex classes
from anonymous classes or classes with value restrictions.
5.1. Set Operators
intersectionOf, unionOf, complementOf
Remember that OWL class extensions are sets consisting of the individuals
that are members of the class. OWL provides the means to
manipulate class extensions using basic set operators.
The following examples demonstrate the use of the
intersectionOf construct.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="WhiteWine">
<owl:intersectionOf rdf:parseType="Collection">
<owl:Class rdf:about="#Wine" />
<owl:Restriction>
<owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#hasColor" />
<owl:hasValue rdf:resource="#White" />
</owl:Restriction>
</owl:intersectionOf>
</owl:Class>
Classes constructed using the set operations are more like
definitions than anything we have seen to date.
The members of the class are completely specified by
the set operation.
The construction above states that WhiteWine is exactly the
intersection of the class Wine and the set of things that are
white in color. This means that if something is white and a wine,
then it is an instance of WhiteWine. Without such a definition
we can know that white wines are wines and white, but not vice-versa.
This is an important tool for categorizing individuals.
(Note that 'rdf:parseType="Collection"' is a required syntactic element.)
<owl:Class rdf:about="#Burgundy">
<owl:intersectionOf rdf:parseType="Collection">
<owl:Class rdf:about="#Wine" />
<owl:Restriction>
<owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#locatedIn" />
<owl:hasValue rdf:resource="#BourgogneRegion" />
</owl:Restriction>
</owl:intersectionOf>
</owl:Class>
Here we define Burgundy to include exactly those wines that have
at least one locatedIn relation to the Bourgogne Region.
We could have declared a new class
ThingsFromBourgogneRegion and used it as a class in the
owl:intersectionOf construct. Since we do not have any other
use for ThingsFromBourgogneRegion, the declaration above is
shorter, clearer and doesn't require the creation of a contrived name.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="WhiteBurgundy">
<owl:intersectionOf rdf:parseType="Collection">
<owl:Class rdf:about="#Burgundy" />
<owl:Class rdf:about="#WhiteWine" />
</owl:intersectionOf>
</owl:Class>
Finally, the class WhiteBurgundy is exactly the intersection of
white wines and Burgundies. Burgundies in turn are grown in the
French region of Bourgogne and are dry wines. Accordingly all
individual wines that meet these criteria are part of the class
extension of WhiteBurgundy.
The following example demonstrates the use of the
unionOf construct. It is used exactly like the
intersectionOf construct:
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Fruit">
<owl:unionOf rdf:parseType="Collection">
<owl:Class rdf:about="#SweetFruit" />
<owl:Class rdf:about="#NonSweetFruit" />
</owl:unionOf>
</owl:Class>
The class Fruit includes both
the extension of SweetFruit and the extension of
NonSweetFruit.
Note how completely different this union type construct is from the following.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Fruit">
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#SweetFruit" />
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#NonSweetFruit" />
</owl:Class> ¬
This says that the instances of Fruit are a subset of the
intersection of sweet and non-sweet fruit, which we would
expect to be the empty set.
The complementOf construct selects all individuals from
the domain of discourse that do not belong to a certain
class. Usually this refers to a very large set of individuals:
<owl:Class rdf:ID="ConsumableThing" />
<owl:Class rdf:ID="NonConsumableThing">
<owl:complementOf rdf:resource="#ConsumableThing" />
</owl:Class>
The class of NonConsumableThing includes as its members
all individuals that do not belong to the extension
of ConsumableThing. This set includes all
Wines, Regions, etc. It is literally the set
difference between owl:Thing and ConsumableThing.
Therefore, a typical usage pattern for
complementOf is in combination with other set
operators:
<owl:Class rdf:ID="NonFrenchWine">
<owl:intersectionOf rdf:parseType="Collection">
<owl:Class rdf:about="#Wine"/>
<owl:Class>
<owl:complementOf>
<owl:Restriction>
<owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#locatedIn" />
<owl:hasValue rdf:resource="#FrenchRegion" />
</owl:Restriction>
</owl:complementOf>
</owl:Class>
</owl:intersectionOf>
</owl:Class> ¬
This defines the class NonFrenchWine to be the
intersection of Wine with the set of all
things not located in France.
OWL provides the means to specify a class via a direct enumeration of its
members. This is done using the oneOf construct. Notably,
this definition completely specifies the class extension, so that no other
individuals can be declared to belong to the class.
The following defines a class WineColor whose
members are the individuals White, Rose, and
Red.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="WineColor">
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#WineDescriptor"/>
<owl:oneOf rdf:parseType="Collection">
<owl:Thing rdf:about="#White"/>
<owl:Thing rdf:about="#Rose"/>
<owl:Thing rdf:about="#Red"/>
</owl:oneOf>
</owl:Class>
The first thing to understand here is that no other individuals can be
a valid WineColor since the class has been defined by
enumeration.
Each element of the oneOf construct must be a validly declared
individual. An individual has to belong to some class. In the above
example, each individual was referenced by name. We used
owl:Thing as a simple cliché to introduce the reference.
Alternatively, we could have referenced the elements of the set
according to their specific type, WineColor, by:
<owl:Class rdf:ID="WineColor">
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#WineDescriptor"/>
<owl:oneOf rdf:parseType="Collection">
<WineColor rdf:about="#White" />
<WineColor rdf:about="#Rose" />
<WineColor rdf:about="#Red" />
</owl:oneOf>
</owl:Class>
Other, more complex descriptions of individuals are also valid
elements of the oneOf construct, for example:
<WineColor rdf:about="#White">
<rdfs:label>White</rdfs:label>
</WineColor> ¬
For additional examples of the use of oneOf, see the
Reference.
The disjointness of a set of classes can be expressed using the
owl:disjointWith constructor. It guarantees that an
individual that is a member of one class cannot simultaneously be an
instance of a specified other class.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Pasta">
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#EdibleThing"/>
<owl:disjointWith rdf:resource="#Meat"/>
<owl:disjointWith rdf:resource="#Fowl"/>
<owl:disjointWith rdf:resource="#Seafood"/>
<owl:disjointWith rdf:resource="#Dessert"/>
<owl:disjointWith rdf:resource="#Fruit"/>
</owl:Class>
The Pasta example demonstrates multiple disjoint classes.
Note that this only asserts that Pasta is disjoint from all
of these other classes. It does not assert, for example, that
Meat and Fruit are disjoint. In order to assert
that a set of classes is mutually disjoint, there must be an
owl:disjointWith assertion for every pair.
A common requirement is to define
a class as the union of a set of mutually disjoint subclasses.
<owl:Class rdf:ID="SweetFruit">
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#EdibleThing" />
</owl:Class>
<owl:Class rdf:ID="NonSweetFruit">
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#EdibleThing" />
<owl:disjointWith rdf:resource="#SweetFruit" />
</owl:Class>
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Fruit">
<owl:unionOf rdf:parseType="Collection">
<owl:Class rdf:about="#SweetFruit" />
<owl:Class rdf:about="#NonSweetFruit" />
</owl:unionOf>
</owl:Class>
Here we define Fruit to be exactly the union of
SweetFruit and NonSweetFruit. And we know that
these subclasses exactly partition Fruit into two distinct subclasses
because they are disjoint.
As the number of mutually disjoint classes
grows, the number of disjointness assertions grows proportionally to
n2. However, in the use cases we have seen, n is typically
small.
When n is large, alternate approaches can be used to avoid quadratic
growth in the number of assertions. One such method is illustrated in
the
OWL test suite
The illustrated method works as follows. We describe a parent class
whose elements have a property with cardinality equal to one. That
is, each instance must have one and only one value for this property.
Then, for every subclass of the parent we require that its instances
must have a particular unique value for the property. In which case
none of the distinct subclasses can have members in common.
6. Ontology Versioning
Ontologies are like software, they will be maintained and thus will change
over time.
Within an owl:Ontology element
(discussed above), it is possible to link to a previous
version of the ontology being defined. The owl:priorVersion property
is intended to provide this link, and can be used to track the
version history of an ontology.
<owl:Ontology rdf:about="">
...
<owl:priorVersion rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/CR-owl-guide-20030818/wine"/>
...
</owl:Ontology>
The indicated ontology is a previous version of the one being defined.
Ontology versions may not be compatible with each other. For example, a
prior version of an ontology may contain statements that contradict the current
version. Within an owl:Ontology element,
we use the tags owl:backwardCompatibleWith
and owl:incompatibleWith to indicate compatibility or the
lack thereof with previous ontology versions.
If owl:backwardCompatibleWith is not declared, then
compatibility should not be assumed.
In addition, owl:versionInfo
provides a hook suitable for use by versioning systems. As opposed to the previous three tags,
the object of owl:versionInfo is a literal and the tag can be used
to annotate classes and properties in addition to ontologies.
For many purposes, doing version tracking at the granularity of
an entire ontology is not enough. Maintainers may wish to keep
version information for classes, properties, and individuals - and
even that may not be sufficient. The incremental nature of class expressions
in OWL implies that one ontology may add restrictions to a (named) class defined
in another ontology, and
these additional restrictions themselves may require version information.
OWL Full provides the expressive power to make any sort of assertion about a class,
i.e. that it is an instance of another class, or that it (and not its instances) has
a property and a value for that property. This framework can be used
to build an ontology of classes and properties for tracking version information.
The OWL namespace includes two pre-defined classes that can be used for this purpose:
owl:DeprecatedClass
and owl:DeprecatedProperty.
They are intended to indicate that the class or property will likely be changing in an
incompatible manner in a forthcoming release:
...
<owl:DeprecatedClass rdf:ID="&vin;JugWine" />
<owl:DeprecatedProperty rdf:ID="&vin;hasSeeds" />
... ¬
It is important to note that owl:DeprecatedClass
and owl:DeprecatedProperty
have no additional semantics and it is up to tool
developers and OWL users to ensure they are used as intended.
Once an initial domain ontology is available, a
large number of applications can be developed that exploit the
ontology. In this section, we describe some
sample uses in the domain of wines.
A number of sites exist today that call themselves wine portals.
Google for example, provides 152,000 matches for the query "wine
portal". One of the top matches, a site called
"Wine-Portal.com",
provides access to a number of sites. Many sites
claiming to be wine portals are mostly informational sites. For
example, wine-portal.com's first featured site, called 'cork cuisine'
(www.corkcuisine.com/),
provides information about matching
wines and foods, wines as gifts, etc.
Perusing any of the topic areas, one finds a collection of pages
containing information and sometimes services related to the topic.
For example, 'accessories and gifts' contains information about what to
look for when buying particular wine items and also contains a
significant number of online retailers. Another top level area called
'shopping' has a subarea called 'wine shopping' from which a user can find
online (or 'street shopping') stores (categorized by country).
These two sites are just two of the many examples
today and are representative of the general notion of a wine portal providing
a collection of information and services connected to a particular topic
area.
When looking at these sites in some detail, it is not clear how much
they depend on ontologies today. For example, viewing the source
for the html does not reveal evidence of ontological usage. However,
it is clear that the sites could exploit ontologies had some wine ontologies
been available.
One simple use of ontologies in portal sites is for organization and
browsing. The listing of categories above could be generated from
the top few levels of wine related classes. Queries could exploit
wine ontologies to retrieve wine relevant information.
If one did a search for a term contained in the ontology, the query could
be expanded with subclass information in order to find more relevant answers.
Portals could be made to automatically update themselves with (candidate) information
in topic areas. With very powerful reasoning
capabilities they could even identify likely wine sales sites and
negotiate to include them as part of the portal.
We have started a
wine agent for expository purposes. In our initial design,
the wine agent's goal is to recommend wines to accompany meal courses.
This application exploits the ontology used as the basis of this guide.
This wine ontology is available in the DAML ontology library and is entitled
wines.
A personalized wine agent can provide a number of services for a human.
The agent may be used to recommend wines given a set of constraints
(such as a meal being served), the agent may find information about
a particular wine or a particular class of wines, it may look for appropriate
accessories for a wine (such as a particular kind of glass suited for that
wine varietal, etc.).
Below, we describe an example in a simple prototype system that is being
written as a student project.
Consider the following scenario:
Someone is planning a dinner party and at least one of the guests is
wine knowledgeable. The host would like to serve wine that is well
matched to the course(s) on the menu. The host would also like to
appear knowledgeable about the wines served at the event. The host
would also like to have appropriate accessories at the dinner. The host
may have decided to serve a special tomato based pasta sauce with fresh
pasta as the main course.
In order to serve wines appropriate to the meal, the host needs information
concerning wine and food pairings. In order to appear knowledgeable
about wines, the host would benefit from having access to wine information
relevant to the event. In order to have appropriate wine accessories,
the host would need to have information about what accessories are relevant
to the situation (and are within the host's price range).
With a background wine ontology, given a description of a meal, a wine
agent can suggest the type of wine to serve with the meal. The wine
agent may suggest a zinfandel as the varietal of choice for the meal.
Additionally, given a background ontology, the wine agent may suggest a
particular zinfandel, possibly Marietta Zinfandel. Given the information
that the wine should be a zinfandel, a wine agent may look for a place
to acquire either a selection of zinfandels or it may look for a particular
zinfandel wine, such as Marietta. Given a background ontology containing
appropriate sources for wine purchases (possibly filtered by the location
of the host and the location of the wine seller), the wine agent could
go to a site such as wine.com and do
a search for 'zinfandels' returning a listing
of zinfandels for sale on that site. The wine agent could attempt
to find Marietta Zinfandel
either from the winery itself or from other resellers. It could,
for example, find (by a search on Google or a structured search of selected
Web sites) that winelibrary.com has a sale on Marietta Zinfandel 1999 vintage
for a discounted price of $13.99. The wine agent could
use additional filtering information such as price ranges provided either
by the consumer or as suggestions based on varietal.
The wine agent may now attempt to provide information concerning
zinfandel in general or Marietta Zinfandel in particular. It could
use a background ontology of wine sites to find information about
particular wines. For example, the winery description of
their most recent Zinfandel may be of use.
Additionally reviews from respected sources such as the Wine Spectator may
be of use. If no review of Marietta Zinfandel is available on a
favorite wine review site, it may be useful to look for related
information such as reviews on zinfandels from the same region, in
this case zinfandels from Sonoma County, California.
General background information may also be of use. The host may
also want to do some reading and may be interested in books on wine in
general or zinfandels in particular. For example, the host may be
interested in the books that Amazon.com has for sale
on zinfandel. The host may also be interested in information
concerning wines from the same region, and thus may be interested in Sonoma
zinfandels. A wine agent may have typical background information
available that is related to its main knowledge areas. For example,
this wine agent is concerned with matching foods and wines, so it may have
both free and purchasable information on this topic such as the Wine Spectator's
article on matching
food and wine.
The dinner host may also want to acquire appropriate wine accessories
prior to the event. Wine is served in wine glasses and different
wine varietals are best served in different kinds of glasses. For
example, if the host has chosen a meal course for which a zinfandel
is appropriate, the host may want to know that Riedel
is a well-known manufacturer of wine glassware. The host may also
want to be linked to the Wine Enthusiast (a well respected supplier of
wine merchandise) and be told that the Wine Enthusiast has Riedel's
Vinum Zinfandel glass for sale as a set of 4 for $63.95 (with a discount
to $59.95 if you buy two sets of 4 glasses). The host may also
be interested to know that Amazon.com has Reidel's
Sommelier Zinfandel single stem glass available for $49.99 (and claims
a list price of $65.00). Amazon also has the same Vinum
glass for sale in sets of 6 (instead of 4 on the wine enthusiast) for $79.99
(and claims a list price of $119.40). A wine agent could provide
a comparison listing of glassware that is matched to the meal (i.e., is
appropriate to be used to serve zinfandel) and then is compared by price
or other criteria chosen from a list of properties in the ontology.
The dinner host may want to consider other wine accessories. From
the ontology, we know that corkscrews are wine accessories. The background
ontology may encode subclasses of corkscrews or such information could
be found from relevant wine sites as well. The
Wine Enthusiast has a set of corkscrews
they recommend
(with descriptions of the types and price ranges). They also distinguish
corkscrews by type (level, waiter, stationary, twist, and pump) and the
dinner host may want to get information about those styles.
The wine agent may be taken to many levels of sophistication depending
upon background ontology knowledge of the domain and information and services
sites. In this example, we only exploited information
concerning wines, varietal type, food and wine combinations, some wine
accessories and their related properties. We could of course expand
this to include more information and more constraints by the customer.
An evolving example of this wine agent is available.
Acknowledgements
This document is the result of extensive discussions within
the Web Ontology
Working Group as a whole. The participants in this
Working Group included: Yasser alSafadi, Jean-François
Baget, James Barnette, Sean Bechhofer, Jonathan Borden,
Frederik Brysse, Stephen Buswell, Jeremy Carroll, Dan
Connolly, Peter Crowther, Jonathan Dale, Jos De Roo, David De
Roure, Mike Dean, Larry Eshelman, Jérôme Euzenat,
Tim Finin, Nicholas Gibbins, Sandro Hawke, Patrick Hayes,
Jeff Heflin, Ziv Hellman, James Hendler, Bernard Horan,
Masahiro Hori, Ian Horrocks, Jane Hunter, Francesco
Iannuzzelli, Rüdiger Klein, Natasha Kravtsova, Ora
Lassila, Massimo Marchiori, Deborah McGuinness, Enrico Motta,
Leo Obrst, Mehrdad Omidvari, Martin Pike, Marwan Sabbouh,
Guus Schreiber, Noboru Shimizu, Michael Sintek, Michael K.
Smith, John Stanton, Lynn Andrea Stein, Herman ter Horst,
David Trastour, Frank van Harmelen, Bernard Vatant, Raphael
Volz, Evan Wallace, Christopher Welty, Charles White, and
John Yanosy.
Some critical early text on complex restrictions was written by
Raphael Volz,
Forschungszentrum Informatik (FZI).
Substantial insight was provided by the
DAML+OIL Walkthru.
Jeremy Carroll, Jerome Euzenat, Jeff Heflin, Kevin Page and
Peter F. Patel-Schneider provided extensive reviews.
At the WG Face to Face, 8 October 2002, Stephen Buswell,
Ruediger Klein, Enrico Motta, and Evan Wallace provided a detailed review of the
ontology resulting in substantial changes.
At the WG Face to Face, 10 January 2003, Jonathan Dale, Bernard Horan,
Guus Schreiber, and Jeff Heflin provided detailed reviews of the
Guide resulting in changes.
The
public reviews
provided numerous helpful suggestions and corrections.
- Attribute
- as in XML
- Class Definition
- informal term for an owl:Class element
- Class Description
- describes an OWL class, either by a class name or
by specifying a class extension of an unnamed anonymous class
- Class name
- informal term for an owl:Class rdf:ID attribute value.
- Class
- as in RDF
- Component
- for parts of a definition e.g. the arguments to intersection-of in a class definition
- Concept
- informal term for the abstractions "in the world" that ontologies describe
- Constraint
- informal term for discussing the effect of a restriction
- Data-valued Property
- alternative term for DataType Property
- Datatype Property
- an OWL property that relates individuals to data values
- Datatype
- an RDFS datatype, almost always one of the built-in non-list XML Schema datatypes
- Element
- (1) as in XML
- (2) an element of a set
- Entity
- as in XML
- 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-valued Property
- alternative term for Object Property
- Individual
- an instance of an OWL class, i.e., a resource that belongs to the class extension of an OWL class
- Instance Of
- the relation between an individual and a class
- Instance
- a member of the class extension of an OWL class
- Name
- as in XML Namespaces
- Named Class
- an OWL class with an associated identifier
- Node
- as in RDF Graphs
- OWL Class
- an RDFS class that belongs to the class extension of owl:Class
- Object Property
- an OWL property that relates individuals to other individuals
- Object
- (1) the object of an RDF triple
- (2) an alternative term for individual (used for historical reasons)
- Ontology Document
- a Web document that contains an ontology, generally indicated by the presence of an owl:Ontology element in the document
- Ontology
- (1) collection of information, generally including information about classes and properties
- (2) the information contained in an ontology document
- Property Definition
- informal term for an
owl:ObjectProperty element and or owl:DatatypeProperty element
- Resource
- an element of the RDF domain of discourse
- Restriction, global
- reserved for discussions of the domain and range of properties
- Restriction, local
- [see above]
- Restriction
- usually a piece of a class expression, a statement that expresses a constraint, local by default
- Set
- a mathematical set
- Statement
- as in RDF Graphs
- Type
- as in RDF (rdf:type)
- URI reference
- as in RDF
- Unnamed Class
- an OWL class without an associated identifier, normally components of restrictions.
- Vocabulary
- a set of URI references
- [OWL Semantics and Abstract Syntax]
-
OWL Web Ontology Language Semantics and Abstract Syntax
,
Peter F. Patel-Schneider, Patrick Hayes, and Ian Horrocks, Editors.
W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004,
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-semantics-20040210/.
Latest version
available at http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-semantics/.
- [OWL Overview]
-
OWL Web Ontology Language Overview
,
Deborah L. McGuinness and Frank van Harmelen, Editors.
W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004,
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-features-20040210/.
Latest version
available at http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/.
- [OWL Reference]
-
OWL Web Ontology Language Reference
,
Mike Dean and Guus Schreiber, Editors.
W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004,
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-ref-20040210/.
Latest version
available at http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref/.
- [OWL Requirements]
-
OWL Web Ontology Language Use Cases and Requirements
,
Jeff Heflin, Editor.
W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004,
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-webont-req-20040210/.
Latest version
available at http://www.w3.org/TR/webont-req/.
- [OWL Test Cases]
-
OWL Web Ontology Language Test Cases
,
Jeremy J. Carroll and Jos De Roo, Editors.
W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004,
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-test-20040210/.
Latest version
available at http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-test/.
- [RDF]
-
Resource Description Framework (RDF) Model and Syntax Specification
,
Ora Lassila, Ralph R. Swick, Editors.
World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation, 1999,
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-rdf-syntax-19990222/.
Latest version
available at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-rdf-syntax/.
-
[RDFS]
-
RDF Vocabulary Description Language 1.0: RDF Schema
,
Dan Brickley and R.V. Guha, Editors.
W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004,
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-schema-20040210/ .
Latest version
available at http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/.
- [RDF Concepts]
-
Resource Description Framework (RDF): Concepts and Abstract Syntax,
Graham Klyne and Jeremy J. Carroll, Editors.
W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004,
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-concepts-20040210/.
Latest version
available at http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-concepts/.
- [RDF Semantics]
-
RDF Semantics
,
Patrick Hayes, Editor.
W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004,
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-mt-20040210/.
Latest version
available at http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-mt/.
- [RDF Syntax]
-
RDF/XML Syntax Specification (Revised)
,
Dave Beckett, Editor.
W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004,
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-syntax-grammar-20040210/.
Latest version
available at http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar.
- [URI]
-
Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax
,
T. Berners-Lee, R. Fielding, and L. Masinter,
IETF Draft Standard August, 1998 (RFC 2396).
- [XML Base]
-
XML Base,
Jonathan Marsh, Editor. W3C Recommendation, 27 June 2001,
http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xmlbase-20010627/.
Latest version
available at http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlbase/.
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[XML Namespaces]
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Namespaces in XML
,
Tim Bray, Dave Hollander, Andrew Layman, Editors.
W3C Recommendation, Jan 1999,
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xml-names-19990114/.
Latest version
available at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names.
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[XML]
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Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0
,
Tim Bray, Jean Paoli, C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, Editors.
W3C Recommendation, 10 February 1998,
http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210.
Latest version
available at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml.
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[XML Schema 1]
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XML Schema Part 1: Structures,
Henry S. Thompson, David Beech, Murray Maloney, and Noah Mendelsohn, Editors.
W3C Recommendation, 2 May 2001,
http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xmlschema-1-20010502/.
Latest version available at
http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-1/.
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[XML Schema 2]
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XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes,
Paul V. Biron, Ashok Malhotra, Editors.
W3C Recommendation, 2 May 2001,
http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xmlschema-2-20010502/.
Latest version available at
http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/.
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[Integrating Applications]
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Integrating Applications on the Semantic Web
, James Hendler, Tim Berners-Lee, and Eric Miller.
Journal of the Institute of
Electrical Engineers of Japan, Vol 122(10), October, 2002, p. 676-680.
- [VerticalNet]
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Industrial Strength Ontology Management
,
Aseem Das, Wei Wu, and
Deborah L. McGuinness. Stanford Knowledge Systems Laboratory Technical
Report KSL-01-09 2001. In the Proceedings of the International
Semantic Web Working Symposium, Stanford, CA, July 2001.
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Classic Knowledge Representation System Tutorial
,
Deborah L. McGuinness, Peter F. Patel-Schneider, Richmond
H. Thomason, Merryll K. Abrahams, Lori Alperin Resnick,
Violetta Cavalli-Sforza, and Cristina Conati.
AT&T Bell Laboratories and University of Pittsburgh, 1994.
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Ontology Development 101: A Guide to Creating Your First Ontology,
Natalya Fridman Noy and Deborah L. McGuinness.
Stanford Knowledge Systems Laboratory Technical
Report KSL-01-05 and Stanford Medical Informatics Technical Report
SMI-2001-0880, March 2001.
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Living with CLASSIC: When and How to Use a KL-ONE-Like Language
, Ronald J. Brachman, Deborah L. McGuinness , Peter
F. Patel-Schneider , Lori Alperin Resnick , and Alex
Borgida. In
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representation of knowledge, John Sowa, Editor.
Morgan-Kaufmann, San Mateo, California, 1991, pages 401--456.
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DAML+OIL W3C
Submission, Includes reference description, both model theoretic
and axiomatic semantics, annotated walkthrough and examples.
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Annotated DAML+OIL Ontology Markup
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Dan Connolly, Frank van Harmelen, Ian Horrocks, Deborah McGuinness,
Peter F. Patel-Schneider, Lynn Andrea Stein. December 2001.
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[DAML-ONT]
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DAML-ONT initial release
at http://www.daml.org/2000/10/daml-ont.html.
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Partial DAML-ONT axiomatization
at http://www.daml.org/2000/10/DAML-Ont-kif-axioms-001107.html.
Defined in KIF
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[Description
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The Description Logic Handbook: Theory, Implementation and
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XOL: An XML-Based
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Dublin Core
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Expressing Dublin Core in RDF/XML,
Dave Beckett, Eric Brickley, and Dan Brickley.
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The Karlsruhe Ontology and Semantic Web Tool Suite
at http://kaon.semanticweb.org.
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OIL Home Page at http://oil.semanticweb.org/.
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Ontobroker home page at http://ontobroker.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/index_ob.html.
Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe.
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Ontoknowledge Home Page
at http://www.ontoknowledge.org/.
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RDF: Resource Description Framework.
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Simple HTML Ontology Extensions (SHOE) home page
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University of Maryland.
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KR Home Page at http://kr.org/.
This appendix provides links to introductions to the standards that
OWL depends on.
To fully understand the OWL syntax and semantics you should be
familiar with the basics of the related W3C and IETF standards listed
below. A minimal guide to XML and RDF is provided by the first two
links below.
The Resource Description Framework (RDF) was the
first language specified by the W3C for representing semantic
information about arbitrary resources. RDF Schema
(RDFS) is a W3C candidate recommendation for an extension to RDF
to describe RDF vocabularies. RDFS can be used to create ontologies,
but it is purposefully lightweight, with less expressive power than
OWL.
Like OWL, RDFS includes classes and properties, as well as range and
domain constraints on properties. It provides inheritance hierarchies
for both classes and properties. Upon its release users began
requesting additional features, including data types, enumerations and
the ability to define properties more rigorously.
Other efforts in the research community were already examining exactly
these sorts of features. For those who wish to delve more deeply into
this background, a partial list of projects and languages includes:
Instead of continuing with separate ontology languages for the
Semantic Web, a group of researchers, including many of the main
participants in both the OIL and DAML-ONT efforts, got together in the
Joint US/EU ad hoc Agent
Markup Language Committee to create a new Web ontology language.
This language DAML+OIL built on both OIL and
DAML-ONT, was submitted to the
W3C as a proposed basis for OWL, and was subsequently selected as the
starting point for OWL.
In addition to ontology languages, various taxonomies and existing
ontologies are already in use commercially. In
e-Commerce sites they facilitate machine-based
communication between buyer and seller, enable vertical integration of
markets and allow descriptions to be reused in different marketplaces.
Examples of sites that are actually making commercial use ontologies
include:
- VerticalNet
Vertical Net currently hosts 59 industry-specific e-marketplaces
that span diverse industries such as manufacturing,
communications, energy, and healthcare.
Various medical or drug-related ontologies have been developed to help
manage the overwhelming mass of current medical and biochemical research data
that can be difficult to tie together into a cohesive whole.
One major resource is the Gene
Ontology Consortium which is defining ontologies for
- Molecular Function,
- Biological Process, and
- Cellular Components.
That site also has pointers to ontologies for
- sequence attributes,
- gene product attributes,
- chemical substances,
- pathways,
- anatomies,
- pathology,
- physical characteristics,
- experiment attributes,
- classification, and
- pathology.
There exist large taxonomies in use today that would be ripe for
extension into the OWL space. For example, the North American
Industry Classification System (NAICS) defines a hierarchy of over
1900 items that identify industry types.
NAICS is also tied to the International Standard Industrial
Classification System (ISIC, Revision 3), developed and maintained by
the United Nations.
- Corrected a typo (allValuesFrom to someValuesFrom) in the TexasThings example in 4.1.
- Added anchor for owl:AnnotationProperty.
- In 3.1.1. added explicit ontology prefix for 'about' syntax example.
- Added a cross reference to the description of the use of owl:oneOf in the
Reference at the end of 5.2.
- Made a number of minor corrections suggested by
a
message to public-webont-comments.
- Modified citations for consistency with other OWL documents.
- Fixed typos related to numbering in namespace references.