CODEWITHSUNDEEP
semantic-webowlprotege
VikkyB
VikkyB

Reputation: 1450

OWL ontology design with protege

Hi I am designing an Ontology in which I need to define a data property 'SSN' for a class named 'Person'. Now one restriction, which I am thinking, would be of uniqueness. That is no two instances of class 'Person' should have same SSN. My question: How to define such restriction in Protege?

http://www.co-ode.org/resources/reference/manchester_syntax/

defines some restrictions but I think nothing fits in my case.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 417

Answers (1)

Ian Dickinson
Ian Dickinson

Reputation: 13295

You just need to define the SSN property as inverse-functional. An inverse functional property means that wherever you see a given range value, you know that the subject resource must be the same. So, if p is inverse functional, and you have:

R0 p N .
R1 p N .

then you can infer that R0 and R1 must denote the same individual. If you know, through some other axioms, that R0 and R1 are in fact different, then a reasoner will report that your model is inconsistent. That's as close as you can get to the consistency checking you want in an open-world knowledge base.

Upvotes: 3

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