Property composition and other constructs to support identity in OWL

• Main Author: M. Colomb, Robert
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Penerbit UTM Press 2008
• Subjects: QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
• Online Access: http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/11027/1/RobertMColomb2008_PropertyCompositionAndOtherConstructs.pdf; http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/11027/

This paper presents proposals for augmenting OWL Full with constructs necessary for supporting identity, an essential facility for ontologies governing interoperating information systems. These constructs include declaration that a property is one-to-one, a representation of the image of a property, and composition of properties. Using definitions from Category theory, property composition allows definition of Cartesian product without requiring that an individual have any internal structure. Category theory-style definitions and reasoning work entirely with properties, therefore are not affected by the open world semantics of OWL. The definitions permit representation of n-ary relations, association classes, parameterised families of properties and indexed families of classes.