Collections Ontology v.2... list of persons [1]

Back in 2008 I've published a couple of posts explaining my need of creating an ontology for collections:

• Moving towards the SWAN Collections Ontology [1]
• Moving towards the SWAN Collections Ontology [2]

After some months of work with Silvio Peroni we are almost done with v.2 of Collections Ontology (CO) expressed in OWL2.  Following is a simple example that illustrates some of the features of CO2. Before that here is how to set up the environment for testing the features yourself. First of all I would suggest you to install Protege 4.1 and to make sure to install the Pellet plugin for it.

With Protege up and running, I performed the import of the development version of the Collection Ontology v.2 with URL: http://collections-ontology.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/collections.owl.

Figure 1 - Import of the development version of the Collections Ontology (CO) with Protege

Figure 2 - Collections Ontology (CO) is imported

After that I've created a class person - note that I haven't reused classes such as foaf:Person to keep the example simple - and the instances in figure 3 in order to model a list of persons (you can download the file here).

Figure 3 - Collections Ontology (CO) example instances (ovals)

After triggering the reasoner, it is immediate to notice inferred properties (figure 4 in light yellow).

Figure 4 - Inferred types and properties for item instance itemOne. For instance itemOne has been defined as instance of item, the reasoner infers itemOne (i) is a list item (ii) is follwed by both itemTwo and itemThree (iii) is item of and is first item of persons.

Figure 5 - Explanation of itemOne type 'list item' obtaining by clicking the highlighted button

We can now proceed with some DL Queries.

Query 1
For instance we can ask for all the items that have item content (has item content) persons with name "Paolo Ciccarese":

item and 'has item content' some (person and (name value "Paolo Ciccarese"))

In the Protege tab named 'DL Query' we can enter the query above and, if we select on the right side the option 'Individuals' we are going to  retrieve one item (itemOne):

Query 2
We can ask for all the lists where the first person is named 'Paolo Ciccarese' (answer 'persons'):

list and 'has first item' some (
     item and 'has item content' some (person and (name value "Paolo Ciccarese"))
)

Query 3
Similarly we can ask more complex queries such as: find all the persons lists where the first item points to a person named 'Paolo Ciccarese' and the last item points to a person named 'Silvio Peroni' (answer 'persons'):

list and (
    'has first item' some (item and 'has item content' some
           (person and (name value "Paolo Ciccarese")))
    and
    'has last item' some (item and 'has item content' some
           (person and (name value "Silvio Peroni")))
)

Query 4
Another query can be: give me all the lists where the first person is named 'Paolo Ciccarese' and the second is 'Marco Ocana' (given the transitive nature of the property 'is followed by' the answer is 'persons'):

list and (
      'has first item' some (item and
            'has item content' some (person and (name value "Paolo Ciccarese"))
            and
            'is followed by' some (item  and
                    ('has item content' some(person and(name value "Marco Ocana"))))
      )
)

Query 5
Returns all the lists containing a person named 'Paolo Ciccarese' (answer 'persons'):

list and 'has item' some (
     item and 'has item content' some (person and (name value "Paolo Ciccarese"))
)

Query 6
Returns any list where a person named 'Paolo Ciccarese' is followed by a person named 'Silvio Peroni' (answer 'persons'):

list and (
    'has item' some (item and
            'has item content' some (person and (name value "Paolo Ciccarese"))
            and
            'is followed by' some (item  and
                    ('has item content' some(person and(name value "Silvio Peroni"))))
      )
)

Query 7
Returns all the lists where a person named 'Silvio Peroni' is preceeded by a person named 'Paolo Ciccarese' (answer 'persons'):

list and (
    'has item' some (item and
            'has item content' some (person and (name value "Silvio Peroni"))
            and
            'is preceded by' some (item  and
                    ('has item content' some(person and(name value "Paolo Ciccarese"))))
      )
)