I'm building an ontology and I need to create the same semantic relation (the name of the relation is the same as well as the meaning in the domain) between different classes of elements. For example:
o:ClassA o:hasSemanticRelation xsd:string
o:ClassB o:hasSemanticRelation xsd:string
o:ClassC o:hasSemanticRelation xsd:string
My first approach was to create multiple domains for the property but this actually means the intersection of the concepts which is not correct in the domain. My second approach was to have a super property
owl:Thing o:hasSemanticRelation xsd:string
o:hasSemanticRelationA owl:subPropertyOf o:hasSemanticRelation
o:ClassA o:hasSemanticRelationA xsd:string
Because of the meaning of the hasSemanticRelation I want that every time it is used it can be linked to the same property, i.e., o:hasSemanticRelation
Could anyone give ideas how can I best represent this situation?
What about defining a superclass ABC from classes A, B, and C, and define such property in the superclass? Something like this:
o:classABC o:hasSemanticRelation xsd:string
o:classA rdfs:subclassOf o:classABC
...
Then, you might need to define that such hierarchy between ABC and A, B, C is complete. However, I think that you would not be able to do so if you work with some OWL equivalent to DL-Lite (such as OWL2QL)
Have you considered owl:unionOf to define a class extension that contains all individuals of the class descriptions in the list? For example:
o:hasSemanticRelation rdfs:domain [
a owl:Class ;
owl:unionOf ( o:ClassA o:ClassB o:ClassC )
] .
Note that owl:unionOf is not part of OWL Lite.
Both answers make sense regarding how to do it in OWL. The issue is that in the domain it does not have too much sense one class created from the superclass or the union. The issue is that despite these three classes share the same "name" for the property they model three different concepts.
So you say, the meaning of o:hasSemanticRelation is the same in the domain, but not in the range? Then you should use three different properties instead.
I think, you have to provide a real example to better understand your problem.
You should not set the domain of the property. Instead make "someValuesFrom" restrictions involving the property on your classes.
For example, if you would have the datatype property "hasName" (with range xsd:string, if you will), rather then saying that the domain of "hasName" is the unionOf (Person, Organization, Building, Class, ...), where "..." would contain anything that can possibly have a name in your domain of concern, you should not specify the domain of the property at all (it would be owl:Thing by default), instead you should add the "(hasName some xsd:string)" class expression as a superclass of the "Person", "Organization", etc. classes.
Remember that in OWL, when you set the domain of a property to a class, it does not mean the instances of the given class have that property, but rather, it means that if an individual has a property value assertion along that property, that individual is an instance of the given class.
If any of this is new to you, you should read more about the semantics of domain and range in OWL, either here:
http://www.cs.vu.nl/~guus/public/owl-restrictions/
, or this is too abstract for you, look at the "Property Domains and Ranges" chapter in the Protege OWL Tutorial:
http://mowl-power.cs.man.ac.uk/protegeowltutorial/resources/ProtegeOWLTutorialP4_v1_3.pdf
The relationship is-a that builds the taxonomy of ontology, represents the same situation as your relationship. I think you can choose your first approach.
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