Converting a class into an individual or an individual into a class

[Jos Lehmann]

Hi there

A general question: are there (implemented) operations of conversions in OWL-DL of:


1. An individual into a class

2. A class into an individual

If so, what are they called? Could you direct me to relevant references in the literature describing these operations?

My hunch at the moment is that in Protégé 1. and 2. above would be refactoring operations, although in the Refactoring Menu I can't see any obvious options that would suggest 1. or 2..

More generally I would think that the following terminology may have been used for such operations:


a. Abstraction or Conceptualization
Vs. Vs.

b. Concretization or Reification


( Note that reification would normally be applied to relations/properties rather than classes. Then again, if a class can be considered as a 1-ary relation (can it?), one could reify a class as well )

Thanks, Jos

[Lorenz B.]

As long as there are only declaration of individuals and classes it's
more or less simply removing the old triple and add the new one.


But, once those entities are used in other OWL axioms, it's not that
simple and depends on the ontology. For example

1. How to convert subClassOf relationships between classes when
converting to individuals?
2. How to handle relationships between individuals when converting to
classes?

And this are just the most basic axioms.

I don't see any automatic approach.

Post by Jos Lehmann
Hi there
1. An individual into a class
2. A class into an individual
If so, what are they called? Could you direct me to relevant references in the literature describing these operations?
My hunch at the moment is that in Protégé 1. and 2. above would be refactoring operations, although in the Refactoring Menu I can't see any obvious options that would suggest 1. or 2..
a. Abstraction or Conceptualization
Vs. Vs.
b. Concretization or Reification
( Note that reification would normally be applied to relations/properties rather than classes. Then again, if a class can be considered as a 1-ary relation (can it?), one could reify a class as well )
Thanks, Jos

[Jos Lehmann]

Hi Lorenz, Emna

You're propobably right about the feasibility of automatic solutions.

I have found references though under the general heading "meta-modeling", which provide various modeling solutions to represent a class as an individual of a meta-ontology of choice. In this context they (informally?) refer to what happens to the given class as to "class reification".

I have also found reification as a jena class (link below) although I have not yet look into it:

http://download.topquadrant.com/composer/javadoc/index.html?org/topbraid/core/model/Reification.html

Thanks, Jos

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Hlel Emna [mailto:***@gmail.com]
Gesendet: Montag, 6. März 2017 12:31
An: ***@jena.apache.org
Betreff: Re: Converting a class into an individual or an individual into a class

To my knowledge, reification is used only if there exists an n-ary relation which allows to connect an individual to more than an individual. There is no reification for a class

<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
Garanti
sans virus. www.avast.com
<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
<#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Lorenz B. [mailto:***@informatik.uni-leipzig.de]
Gesendet: Montag, 6. März 2017 12:32
An: ***@jena.apache.org
Betreff: Re: Converting a class into an individual or an individual into a class

As long as there are only declaration of individuals and classes it's more or less simply removing the old triple and add the new one.


But, once those entities are used in other OWL axioms, it's not that simple and depends on the ontology. For example

1. How to convert subClassOf relationships between classes when converting to individuals?
2. How to handle relationships between individuals when converting to classes?

And this are just the most basic axioms.

I don't see any automatic approach.

Post by Jos Lehmann
Hi there
1. An individual into a class
2. A class into an individual
If so, what are they called? Could you direct me to relevant references in the literature describing these operations?
My hunch at the moment is that in Protégé 1. and 2. above would be refactoring operations, although in the Refactoring Menu I can't see any obvious options that would suggest 1. or 2..
a. Abstraction or Conceptualization
Vs. Vs.
b. Concretization or Reification
( Note that reification would normally be applied to
relations/properties rather than classes. Then again, if a class can
be considered as a 1-ary relation (can it?), one could reify a class
as well )
Thanks, Jos

--
Lorenz Bühmann
AKSW group, University of Leipzig
Group: http://aksw.org - semantic web research center

[A. Soroka]

That is not a Jena class. That is a class from a TopBraid product. It seems that the reification to which it refers is not the OWL "punning" about which I think you were asking but RDF reification:

https://jena.apache.org/documentation/notes/reification.html

---
A. Soroka
The University of Virginia Library

Post by Jos Lehmann
Hi Lorenz, Emna
You're propobably right about the feasibility of automatic solutions.
I have found references though under the general heading "meta-modeling", which provide various modeling solutions to represent a class as an individual of a meta-ontology of choice. In this context they (informally?) refer to what happens to the given class as to "class reification".
http://download.topquadrant.com/composer/javadoc/index.html?org/topbraid/core/model/Reification.html
Thanks, Jos
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Gesendet: Montag, 6. März 2017 12:31
Betreff: Re: Converting a class into an individual or an individual into a class
To my knowledge, reification is used only if there exists an n-ary relation which allows to connect an individual to more than an individual. There is no reification for a class
<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
Garanti
sans virus. www.avast.com
<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
<#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Gesendet: Montag, 6. März 2017 12:32
Betreff: Re: Converting a class into an individual or an individual into a class
As long as there are only declaration of individuals and classes it's more or less simply removing the old triple and add the new one.
But, once those entities are used in other OWL axioms, it's not that simple and depends on the ontology. For example
1. How to convert subClassOf relationships between classes when converting to individuals?
2. How to handle relationships between individuals when converting to classes?
And this are just the most basic axioms.
I don't see any automatic approach.

Post by Jos Lehmann
Hi there
1. An individual into a class
2. A class into an individual
If so, what are they called? Could you direct me to relevant references in the literature describing these operations?
My hunch at the moment is that in Protégé 1. and 2. above would be refactoring operations, although in the Refactoring Menu I can't see any obvious options that would suggest 1. or 2..
a. Abstraction or Conceptualization
Vs. Vs.
b. Concretization or Reification
( Note that reification would normally be applied to
relations/properties rather than classes. Then again, if a class can
be considered as a 1-ary relation (can it?), one could reify a class
as well )
Thanks, Jos

--
Lorenz Bühmann
AKSW group, University of Leipzig
Group: http://aksw.org - semantic web research center

[Jos Lehmann]

Hi there

Post by A. Soroka
That is not a Jena class. That is a class from a TopBraid product.

Ok, thanks, I had not noticed the class path...

Post by A. Soroka
https://jena.apache.org/documentation/notes/reification.html

Yes punning seems to be one option for class reification.

The reference below propose additional OWL2 options: class-based meta-modeling and meta-level constraints.

http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/files/3129/paper.pdf

Not sure how much of this has been used for automatic or automated approaches.

The reference below seem to provide evaluations for some of the approaches.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6032348

Thanks, Jos


---
A. Soroka
The University of Virginia Library

Post by A. Soroka
Hi Lorenz, Emna
You're propobably right about the feasibility of automatic solutions.
I have found references though under the general heading "meta-modeling", which provide various modeling solutions to represent a class as an individual of a meta-ontology of choice. In this context they (informally?) refer to what happens to the given class as to "class reification".
http://download.topquadrant.com/composer/javadoc/index.html?org/topbra
id/core/model/Reification.html
Thanks, Jos
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Gesendet: Montag, 6. März 2017 12:31
Betreff: Re: Converting a class into an individual or an individual into a class
To my knowledge, reification is used only if there exists an n-ary
relation which allows to connect an individual to more than an
individual. There is no reification for a class
<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_
campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
Garanti
sans virus. www.avast.com
<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_
campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
<#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Gesendet: Montag, 6. März 2017 12:32
Betreff: Re: Converting a class into an individual or an individual into a class
As long as there are only declaration of individuals and classes it's more or less simply removing the old triple and add the new one.
But, once those entities are used in other OWL axioms, it's not that
simple and depends on the ontology. For example
1. How to convert subClassOf relationships between classes when converting to individuals?
2. How to handle relationships between individuals when converting to classes?
And this are just the most basic axioms.
I don't see any automatic approach.

Post by Jos Lehmann
Hi there
1. An individual into a class
2. A class into an individual
If so, what are they called? Could you direct me to relevant references in the literature describing these operations?
My hunch at the moment is that in Protégé 1. and 2. above would be refactoring operations, although in the Refactoring Menu I can't see any obvious options that would suggest 1. or 2..
a. Abstraction or Conceptualization
Vs. Vs.
b. Concretization or Reification
( Note that reification would normally be applied to
relations/properties rather than classes. Then again, if a class can
be considered as a 1-ary relation (can it?), one could reify a class
as well )
Thanks, Jos

--
Lorenz Bühmann
AKSW group, University of Leipzig
Group: http://aksw.org - semantic web research center

[Hlel Emna]

hi
to understand Reification, see this reference:
https://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-n-aryRelations/

[A. Soroka]

Not sure what you mean here. That document explicitly states (at https://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-n-aryRelations/#RDFReification)

"It may be natural to think of RDF reification when representing n-ary relations. We do not want to use the RDF reification vocabulary to represent n-ary relations in general…"


---
A. Soroka
The University of Virginia Library

Post by Hlel Emna
hi
https://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-n-aryRelations/

[Hlel Emna]

To my knowledge, reification is used only if there exists an n-ary relation
which allows to connect an individual to more than an individual. There is
no reification for a class

<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
Garanti
sans virus. www.avast.com
<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
<#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>