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== Representation of Entity and Attribute Classes == | == Representation of Entity and Attribute Classes == |
Revision as of 22:13, 8 December 2009
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Contents
Version 1.1
- This page describes version 1.1 of the Higgins Data Model
Introduction
The Higgins data model (ontology) builds on the Context Data Model 1.1. It incorporates (without reinventing) concepts from the OWL, SKOS, and SPIN ontologies to provide meta modeling capabilities. Although building on CDM, the Higgins data model is still an abstract (sometimes called an "upper") ontology for identity information. It doesn't describe concrete attributes such as "email address", "first name", "calendar event", "student", "movie", "book", etc.
The Higgins Data Model is implemented by IdAS 1.1. Developers can extend and adapt IdAS by creating Context Provider plugs. These CPs implement their more specialized (concrete) data models by extending the Higgins data model.
Identity-Related Classes and Attributes
Classes
Agent
: An agent (eg. person, group, software or physical artifact).Group
: A class of Agents. Subclass ofAgent
Organization
: An organization. Subclass ofAgent
Person
: A contextualized aspect of a person. Subclass ofAgent
Attributes
-
part
: A relationship between an aggregated whole (the domain) and a part of that whole (the range) -
member
: A relationship between a Group or Organization and its member Agent (the range). Sub-attribute ofpart
-
partOf
: A relationship between a part (the domain) and an agregated whole (the range). -
memberOf
: The Group or Organization of which this Agent is a member. Sub-attribute ofpartOf
-
correlation
: A directed relation between two entities (possibly in two different Contexts) that are asserted to be representing the same person, group, object or concept. -
contextCorrelation
: A directed relation between two Contexts asserted to be representing the same underlying organization or group. -
synonym
: Used as an abstract super-attribute to "tag" subattributes as being considered alternative identifiers for this entity.
Misc Utility Classes and Attributes
Classes
TimeSpan
: A span of time.
Attributes
-
validFrom
:xsd:date
value -
validTo
:xsd:date
value -
timespan
: value is an instance ofTimeSpan
Representation of Entity and Attribute Classes
There are two kinds of entities: instance entities (e.g. an instance of Clyde the elephant) and class entities (e.g. the concept of elephant). Similarly there are two kinds of attributes: instance attributes (e.g. the length of Clyde's trunk) and class attributes (e.g. the concept of trunk-length). This section describes class entities and class attributes.
Entity Class
Following RDF conventions, each instance entity is linked via an rdf:type
attribute to one or more class entities. The following attributes are used to describe a class entity:
- 1..1
rdf:type
: value must berdf:Class
- 0..1
rdfs:comment
: value is an internal (developer) string comment - 1..1
skos:prefLabel
: internationalized display label skos:prefLabel - 0..1
skos:prefSymbol
: internationalized display symbol (e.g. icon) skos:prefSymbol - 0..N
spin:constraint
: instances ofspl:Attribute
(see below)
Attribute Class
Attributes are described using two separate mechanisms: globally scoped and class scoped. All attributes must be defined by a globally scoped definition. Some may also be class scoped.
Global Attribute Class
Global attribute definitions are entities with the following attributes:
- 1..1
rdf:type
: URI value must either beowl:DatatypeProperty
orowl:ObjectProperty
- 0..1
rdfs:domain
: URI value must be an Entity Class entity - 0..1
rdfs:range
: URI value must be an Entity Class entity, a DataRange, or one of the allowed XML Schema datatypes (e.g. xsd:string, etc.) - 0..1
skos:description
: string value that describes the attribute. Used for tooltip text in UIs - 1..1
skos:prefLabel
: internationalized display label skos:prefLabel - 0..1
skos:prefSymbol
: internationalized display symbol (e.g. icon) skos:prefSymbol - 0..1
skos:example
- an example value - 0..1
h:category
: value must be an instance ofskos:Concept. Indicates the skos:Concept category to which this attribute belongs.
- 0..N
rdfs:subPropertyOf
the value must be another Attribute Class entity
Example:
Here is an example (in the p: namespace) of an alternative phone number:
p:otherPhone a owl:ObjectProperty ; rdfs:comment "An alternative telephone number"@en ; rdfs:domain p:Persona ; rdfs:label "Other phone"^^xsd:string ; rdfs:range p:telephoneURI ; h:category p:account-attribute ; r-card:appId "An alternative telephone number"@en ; vs:term_status "testing" ; skos:prefLabel "Other telephone"@en .
Class-scoped Attribute Class
The class scoped attribute definitions allows attributes to have metadata that is associated with the attribute when used within the scope of a particular class.
The first are the instances of spl:Attribute
mentioned in the previous section describing Entity Classes. These spl:Attributes
have the following attributes:
- 1..1
spl:predicate
: the value of this attribute - 0..1
spl:maxCount
: max cardinality of this attribute. The maximum number of instances of this attribute on instances of the class whosespin:constraint
value is thisspl:Attribute
instance - 0..1
spl:minCount
: min cardinality as above. - 1..1
spl:valueType
: datatype URI. May be literal (e.g.xsd:string
) or may be entity-valued
Note: Those familiar with OWL will realize that we are not using the OWL-defined conventions for expressing cardinality. The SPIN-based alternatives are more natural. It is also handy that these are directly supported by OWL development tools from TopBraid to provide run-time constraint checking.
Conflicting value type attributes in Global- vs. Class-scoped Attribute Classes
The value type of an attribute may be specified by the rdfs:range
attribute of a global Attribute Classes and as the spl:valueType
attribute of a Class-scoped attribute class instance. If both are specified the two value types must not be in conflict.
Attribute Concepts
As described above an attribute may have a h:category
attribute whose value must be a an instance of skos:Concept
in a concept schema. The idea is to provide additional metadata about the nature of an attribute.
Implementation note: The skos:prefLabel
values of these skos:Concept
instances can be used to dynamically create dynamically driven user interfaces that logically group attributes into consistent categories.
higgins.owl
The Higgins_Data_Model_1.1 is described by the file Higgins.owl 1.1.
Developers of Context Providers can create ontologies that are based on higgins.owl to describe specific concrete domains of relevance to Contexts of this Context Provider.
For example, if a developer wanted to describe a CRM database, they would create an OWL ontology that would describe the kinds of data objects and their attributes in the CRM database. This CRM database is called a Context. If, for example, the database contained records about customers and those customers had full-names and email addresses, then the developer would define "Customer" as a sub-class of the Agent
class as defined in higgins.owl, and would define "full-name" and "email" as kinds of Attributes.