Dear All,

The issue has been discussed in CRM-SIG in Heraklion. If we need 3ary relations, because the vocabularies for these roles are not fixed at schema definition time, the only solution is to introduce an RDF class for the relationship. It's no problem in ER, ooER and other metamodels.

Then we can play around with solutions, in which we regard this class being an E13, a reiification, a subevent or whatever, and in no case RDF will recognize the semantics. The utility of reusing or abusing classes like E13 is questionable, in particular if we want to use E13 to describe epistemological situations distinct from the default authors of the knowledge base.

The cleanest way appears to be, following the last discussion/proposal in CRM-SIG, to introduce classes for all 3ary properties by a standard naming convention, such as "R14Node_carried_out_by" , and declare by OWL rules the inferences based on that, in particular, if roles form strict IsA hierarchies. Then, R14 is infered from R14Node by rule,
etc.

Opinions?

Best,

Martin

On 15/10/2014 6:41 ??, Richard Light wrote:
Vladimir,

I can't answer your question on the openness or closed-ness of the two approaches. However, that won't stop me from commenting, since no-one else has. :-)

This is an example of the famous "property of a property" issue, which has proved to be a challenge for the CRM in an RDF context. In the original [abstract] object-oriented CRM data model, we cheerfully allow properties to have properties [1], and this is an accepted way, for example, to qualify the role which a person plays in relation to an activity. However, the way in which this more precise role is normally specified in practice (which the CRM document goes on to give examples of) is by declaring the more specific property to be a subproperty of the original property.

If you do this, the subproperty simply takes the place of the original more generic property in an RDF expression of the statement, and the result is a meaningful RDF triple. If, instead, you try to express "property of a property" as RDF, you find that you are trying to construct a triple with a predicate as its object; something RDF does not allow.

As I understand it, the BM tried the "subproperty" strategy first, and found that it led to an explosion in the size of their data model, and didn't sit well with their actual data, e.g. their roles termlist. So they investigated an alternative approach and came up with the "reified association" strategy. It took me a while to get my head around this, not least because of diagrams like the one at the top of p.15 of the Primer [2], where the arc in red is clearly nonsense in a simplistic RDF-modelling sense. However, I now /believe.

/This particular problem has exercised me for some years. In our XML-based Modes system (which harks back to the original MDA Data Standard in its structuring approach), we routinely record multiple people as being associated with an Activity, each playing distinct role(s). We don't quite get it right there, from a strictly logical PoV:

<Production>
<Person><Role>designer</Role><Name>Light, R.B.</Name></Person>
<Person><Role>engraver</Role><Name>Smith, J.</Name></Person>
...

The point is that each person will play many roles in their life, and the role that is recorded /here /is only meaningful in the context of /this /particular activity. So the role isn't a property of the /person/: it's a property of the /person-playing-a-role/. So, my suggestion is that we create a new class RolePlayer, which could be defined as "one or more Actors playing one or more specified Roles in relation to an Activity". Then we could model what we are trying to say, elegantly and precisely.

The trouble with the "sub-event" strategy is in my view two-fold: it is creating sub-events where there are none, simply to address a modelling problem with people having multiple roles; and it is falsely associating the role with the sub-event when that role is actually a property of the person involved in the sub-event.

Apologies if this has all been discussed before. It does seem like rather a basic point, and I do vaguely remember the concept of "RolePlayer" from the CIDOC Relational Data Model days.

Richard

[1] "Properties may themselves have properties that relate to other classes", CRM Reference v5.1.2, p.ix
[2] http://www.cidoc-crm.org/docs/CRMPrimer_v1.1.pdf

On 14/10/2014 17:44, Vladimir Alexiev wrote:
Hi everyone!
(This is particularly for Martin and Dominic, but comments from everyone are 
welcome)

The BM mapping uses two patterns to express the relation of an entity 
(typically person) to an event:

1. use reification over the relation (bmo:EX_Association is a subclass of CRM 
Attribute Assignment):
https://confluence.ontotext.com/display/ResearchSpace/BM+Association+Mapping+v2#BMAssociationMappingv2-TranslatedCodeInReifiedAssociation Illustrated onhttp://www.cidoc-crm.org/docs/CRMPrimer_v1.1.pdf p.15

2. make sub-event (e.g. Production part) and put the relation type there:
   
https://confluence.ontotext.com/display/ResearchSpace/BM+Association+Mapping+v2#BMAssociationMappingv2-TranslatedCodeinSubEvents
   This is not well illustrated in the CRMPrimer:
   p17 shows a sole event part, and p18 shows two parts but without P2_has_type.
   But you get the idea

2 is used more often in the mapping (see the page above).
1 is used less often: for Influenced/Motivated relations (not for P14 carried 
out by), and to express uncertainty.
Specifically: Acquired Through (contributor), Probably/Unlikely Produced By, 
(production) Influenced By, Production Motivated By, Probably Produced At, Made 
For Place

Martin and Dominic have said that 2 is more open-world while 1 is more 
close-world.
Could you please explain this to me?
It's very important for me as I move closer to Getty ULAN and CONA modeling.

Thanks in advance!


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