Disjunctiveness

Created on March 11, 2013, 7:31 p.m. by Hevok & updated by Hevok on May 2, 2013, 5:32 p.m.

In OWL Classes can be disjoint, which is not possible with RDF and RDFS. In OWL one is able to define two Classes that are disjunctive which means no Individual exists that belongs at the same time to both Classes.

The special word for this is owl:disjointWith.

Sometimes one wants to express that many Classes are not the same, they are all disjoint. For this there exists a shortcut in OWL which is a Class defined as owl:AllDisjointClasses which is a Class. Then one says this Class has Members (owl:members) and one has a Collection. In the collection one states all Classes which are somehow disjunct, i.e. somehow different from each other.

For the definition one has an Empty Node which is stated to be of type owl:AllDisjointClasses. One only states that all Classes that are within the Collection are all disjunctive.

:Human a owl:Class .
:AI a owl:Class .
:Hevok a owl:Class ;
       rdfs:subClassOf :Human .
:EVA a owl:Class ;
       rdfs:subClassOf :AI .

:Human owl:disjointWith :AI .

DL:

Hevok ⊑ Human
EVA ⊑ AI
Human ⊓ AI ⊑ ⊥
  • via Inference it can be entailed that "Hevok" and "EVA" are also disjoint classes.
  • OWL provides a shortcut to define several Classes to be disjunctive

    [] a owl:AllDisjointClasses ; owl:members ( :Hevok :EVA :Naos ) .

disjunctivness.jpg

Tags: hierarchy, ontology, difference
Categories: Concept
Parent: Class Hierarchy

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