Skip to content

An Example Project

This section introduces some of the basic concepts involved in creating ontologies for DSP projects, by means of a relatively simple example project. Before reading this document, it will be helpful to have some familiarity with the basic concepts explained in knora-base.

DSP-API comes with two example projects, called incunabula and images-demo. Here we will consider the incunabula example, which is a reduced version of a real research project on early printed books. It is designed to store an image of each page of each book, as well as RDF data about books, pages, their contents, and relationships between them. At the moment, only the RDF data is provided in the example project, not the images.

The incunabula ontology is in the file incunabula-onto.ttl, and its data is in the file incunabula-demo-data.ttl. Both these files are in a standard RDF file format called Turtle. The DSP-API distribution includes sample scripts (in the webapi/scripts directory) for importing these files directly into different triplestores. If you are starting a new project from scratch, you can adapt these scripts to import your ontology (and any existing RDF data) into your triplestore for use with DSP-API.

The syntax of Turtle is fairly simple: it is basically a sequence of triples. We will consider some details of Turtle syntax as we go along.

The Incunabula Ontology

Here we will just focus on some of the main aspects of the ontology. An ontology file typically begins by defining prefixes for the IRIs of other ontologies that will be referred to. First there are some prefixes for ontologies that are very commonly used in RDF:

@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .
@prefix xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .
@prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/> .
@prefix dcterms: <http://purl.org/dc/terms/> .

The rdf, rdfs, and owl ontologies contain basic properties that are used to define ontology entities. The xsd ontology contains definitions of literal data types such as string and integer. (For more information about these ontologies, see the references in knora-base.) The foaf ontology contains classes and properties for representing people. The dcterms ontology represents Dublin Core metadata.

Then we define prefixes for DSP ontologies:

@prefix knora-base: <http://www.knora.org/ontology/knora-base#> .
@prefix salsah-gui: <http://www.knora.org/ontology/salsah-gui#> .

The knora-base ontology contains DSP-API's core abstractions, and is described in knora-base. The salsah-gui ontology includes properties that DSP projects must use to enable SALSAH, DSP-API's generic virtual research environment.

For convenience, we can use the empty prefix to refer to the incunabula ontology itself:

@prefix : <http://www.knora.org/ontology/0803/incunabula#> .

However, outside the ontology file, it would make more sense to define an incunabula prefix to refer to the incunabula ontology.

Properties

All the content produced by a DSP project must be stored in Knora resources (see incunabula-resource-classes). Resources have properties that point to different parts of their contents; for example, the incunabula project contains books, which have properties like title. Every property that poitns to a DSP value must be a subproperty of knora-base:hasValue, and every property that points to another Knora resource must be a subproperty of knora-base:hasLinkTo.

Here is the definition of the incunabula:title property:

:title rdf:type owl:ObjectProperty ;

  rdfs:subPropertyOf knora-base:hasValue, dcterms:title ;

  rdfs:label "Titel"@de ,
    "Titre"@fr ,
    "Titolo"@it ,
    "Title"@en ;

  knora-base:subjectClassConstraint :book ;

  knora-base:objectClassConstraint knora-base:TextValue ;

  salsah-gui:guiElement salsah-gui:SimpleText ;

  salsah-gui:guiAttribute "size=80" ,
    "maxlength=255" .

The definition of incunabula:title consists of a list of triples, all of which have :title as their subject. To avoid repeating :title for each triple, Turtle syntax allows us to use a semicolon (;) to separate triples that have the same subject. Moreover, some triples also have the same predicate; a comma (,) is used to avoid repeating the predicate. The definition of :title says:

  • rdf:type owl:ObjectProperty: It is an owl:ObjectProperty. There are two kinds of OWL properties: object properties and datatype properties. Object properties point to objects, which have IRIs and can have their own properties. Datatype properties point to literal values, such as strings and integers.
  • rdfs:subPropertyOf knora-base:hasValue, dcterms:title: It is a subproperty of knora-base:hasValue and dcterms:title. Since the objects of this property will be Knora values, it must be a subproperty of knora-base:hasValue. To facilitate searches, we have also chosen to make it a subproperty of dcterms:title. In the DSP-API v2, if you do a search for resources that have a certain dcterms:title, and there is a resource with a matching incunabula:title, the search results could include that resource.
  • rdfs:label "Titel"@de, etc.: It has the specified labels in various languages. These are needed, for example, by user interfaces, to prompt the user to enter a value.
  • knora-base:subjectClassConstraint :book: The subject of the property must be an incunabula:book.
  • knora-base:objectClassConstraint knora-base:TextValue: The object of this property must be a knora-base:TextValue (which is a subclass of knora-base:Value).
  • salsah-gui:guiElement salsah-gui:SimpleText: When SALSAH asks a user to enter a value for this property, it should use a simple text field.
  • salsah-gui:guiAttribute "size=80" , "maxlength=255": The SALSAH text field for entering a value for this property should be 80 characters wide, and should accept at most 255 characters.

The incunabula ontology contains several other property definitions that are basically similar. Note that different subclasses of Value are used. For example, incunabula:pubdate, which represents the publication date of a book, points to a knora-base:DateValue. The DateValue class stores a date range, with a specified degree of precision and a preferred calendar system for display.

A property can point to a Knora resource instead of to a Knora value. For example, in the incunabula ontology, there are resources representing pages and books, and each page is part of some book. This relationship is expressed using the property incunabula:partOf:

:partOf rdf:type owl:ObjectProperty ;

  rdfs:subPropertyOf knora-base:isPartOf ;

  rdfs:label "ist ein Teil von"@de ,
    "est un part de"@fr ,
    "e una parte di"@it ,
    "is a part of"@en ;

  rdfs:comment """Diese Property bezeichnet eine Verbindung zu einer anderen Resource, in dem ausgesagt wird, dass die vorliegende Resource ein integraler Teil der anderen Resource ist. Zum Beispiel ist eine Buchseite ein integraler Bestandteil genau eines Buches."""@de ;

  knora-base:subjectClassConstraint :page ;

  knora-base:objectClassConstraint :book ;

  salsah-gui:guiElement salsah-gui:Searchbox .

The key things to notice here are:

  • rdfs:subPropertyOf knora-base:isPartOf: The knora-base ontology provides a generic isPartOf property to express part-whole relationships. A project may use knora-base:isPartOf directly, however creating a subproperty such as incunabula:partOf will allow to customize the property further, e.g. by giving it a more descriptive label.
    It is important to note that knora-base:isPartOf is a subproperty of knora-base:hasLinkTo. Any property that points to a knora-base:Resource must be a subproperty of knora-base:hasLinkTo. Such a property is called a link property.
  • knora-base:objectClassConstraint :book: The object of this property must be a member of the class incunabula:book, which, as we will see below, is a subclass of knora-base:Resource.
  • salsah-gui:guiElement salsah-gui:Searchbox: When SALSAH prompts a user to select the book that a page is part of, it should provide a search box enabling the user to find the desired book.

Because incunabula:partOf is a link property, it must always accompanied by a link value property, which enables Knora to store metadata about each link that is created with the link property. This metadata includes the date and time when the link was created, its owner, the permissions it grants, and whether it has been deleted. Storing this metadata allows Knora to authorise users to see or modify the link, as well as to query a previous state of a repository in which a deleted link had not yet been deleted. (The ability to query previous states of a repository is planned for DSP-API version 2.)

The name of a link property and its link value property must be related by the following naming convention: to determine the name of the link value property, add the word Value to the name of the link property. Hence, the incunabula ontology defines the property partOfValue:

:partOfValue rdf:type owl:ObjectProperty ;

  rdfs:subPropertyOf knora-base:isPartOfValue ;

  knora-base:subjectClassConstraint :page ;

  knora-base:objectClassConstraint knora-base:LinkValue .

As a link value property, incunabula:partOfValue must point to a knora-base:LinkValue. The LinkValue class is an RDF reification of a triple (in this case, the triple that links a page to a book). For more details about this, see knora-base-linkvalue.

Note that the property incunabula:hasAuthor points to a knora-base:TextValue, because the incunabula project represents authors simply by their names. A more complex project could represent each author as a resource, in which case incunabula:hasAuthor would need to be a subproperty of knora-base:hasLinkTo.

Resource Classes

The two main resource classes in the incunabula ontology are book and page. Here is incunabula:book:

:book rdf:type owl:Class ;

  rdfs:subClassOf knora-base:Resource , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :title ;
    owl:minCardinality "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :hasAuthor ;
    owl:minCardinality "0"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "2"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :publisher ;
    owl:minCardinality "0"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "3"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :publoc ;
    owl:maxCardinality "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "4"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :pubdate ;
    owl:maxCardinality "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "5"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :location ;
    owl:maxCardinality "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "6"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :url ;
    owl:maxCardinality "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "7"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :description ;
    owl:maxCardinality "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "2"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :physical_desc ;
    owl:maxCardinality "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "9"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :note ;
    owl:minCardinality "0"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "10"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :citation ;
    owl:minCardinality "0"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "5"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :book_comment ;
    owl:minCardinality "0"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "12"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] ;

  knora-base:resourceIcon "book.gif" ;

  rdfs:label "Buch"@de ,
    "Livre"@fr ,
    "Libro"@it ,
    "Book"@en ;

  rdfs:comment """Diese Resource-Klasse beschreibt ein Buch"""@de .

Like every Knora resource class, incunabula:book is a subclass of knora-base:Resource. It is also a subclass of a number of other classes of type owl:Restriction, which are defined in square brackets, using Turtle's syntax for anonymous blank nodes. Each owl:Restriction specifies a cardinality for a property that is allowed in resources of type incunabula:book. A cardinality is indeed a kind of restriction: it means that a resource of this type may have, or must have, a certain number of instances of the specified property. For example, incunabula:book has cardinalities saying that a book must have at least one title and at most one publication date. In the DSP-API version 1, the word 'occurrence' is used instead of 'cardinality'.

The OWL cardinalities supported by Knora are described in OWL Cardinalities.

Note that incunabula:book specifies a cardinality of owl:minCardinality 0 on the property incunabula:hasAuthor. At first glance, this might seem as if it serves no purpose, since it says that the property is optional and can have any number of instances. You may be wondering whether this cardinality could simply be omitted from the definition of incunabula:book. However, Knora requires every property of a resource to have some cardinality in the resource's class. This is because Knora uses the cardinalities to determine which properties are possible for instances of the class, and the DSP-API relies on this information. If there was no cardinality for incunabula:hasAuthor, Knora would not allow a book to have an author.

Each owl:Restriction specifying a cardinality can include the predicate salsah-gui:guiOrder, which tells the SALSAH GUI the order the properties should be displayed in.

Here is the definition of incunabula:page:

:page rdf:type owl:Class ;

  rdfs:subClassOf knora-base:StillImageRepresentation , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :pagenum ;
    owl:maxCardinality "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :partOfValue ;
    owl:cardinality "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "2"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :partOf ;
    owl:cardinality "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "2"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :seqnum ;
    owl:maxCardinality "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "3"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :description ;
    owl:maxCardinality "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "2"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :citation ;
    owl:minCardinality "0"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "5"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :page_comment ;
    owl:minCardinality "0"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "6"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :origname ;
    owl:cardinality "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "7"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :hasLeftSidebandValue ;
    owl:maxCardinality "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "10"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :hasLeftSideband ;
    owl:maxCardinality "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "10"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :hasRightSidebandValue ;
    owl:maxCardinality "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "11"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :hasRightSideband ;
    owl:maxCardinality "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "11"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :transcription ;
    owl:minCardinality "0"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
    salsah-gui:guiOrder "12"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] ;

  knora-base:resourceIcon "page.gif" ;

  rdfs:label "Seite"@de ,
    "Page"@fr ,
    "Page"@en ;

  rdfs:comment """Eine Seite ist ein Teil eines Buchs"""@de ,
    """Une page est une partie d'un livre"""@fr ,
    """A page is a part of a book"""@en .

The incunabula:page class is a subclass of knora-base:StillImageRepresentation, which is a subclass of knora-base:Representation, which is a subclass of knora-base:Resource. The class knora-base:Representation is used for resources that contain metadata about files stored by Knora. Each It has different subclasses that can hold different types of files, including still images, audio, and video files. A given Representation can store metadata about several different files, as long as they are of the same type and are semantically equivalent, e.g. are different versions of the same image with different colorspaces, so that coordinates in one file will work in the other files.

In Knora, a subclass inherits the cardinalities defined in its superclasses. Let's look at the class hierarchy of incunabula:page, starting with knora-base:Representation:

:Representation rdf:type owl:Class ;

  rdfs:subClassOf :Resource , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :hasFileValue ;
    owl:minCardinality "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] ;

  rdfs:comment "A resource that can store one or more FileValues"@en .

This says that a Representation must have at least one instance of the property hasFileValue, which is defined like this:

:hasFileValue rdf:type owl:ObjectProperty ;

  rdfs:subPropertyOf :hasValue ;

  :subjectClassConstraint :Representation ;

  :objectClassConstraint :FileValue .

The subject of hasFileValue must be a Representation, and its object must be a FileValue. There are different subclasses of FileValue for different kinds of files, but we'll skip the details here.

This is the definition of knora-base:StillImageRepresentation:

:StillImageRepresentation rdf:type owl:Class ;

  rdfs:subClassOf :Representation , [
    rdf:type owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty :hasStillImageFileValue ;
    owl:minCardinality "1"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger
  ] ;

  rdfs:comment "A resource that can contain two-dimensional still image files"@en .

It must have at least one instance of the property hasStillImageFileValue, which is defined as follows:

:hasStillImageFileValue rdf:type owl:ObjectProperty ;

  rdfs:subPropertyOf :hasFileValue ;

  :subjectClassConstraint :StillImageRepresentation ;

  :objectClassConstraint :StillImageFileValue .

Because hasStillImageFileValue is a subproperty of hasFileValue, the cardinality on hasStillImageFileValue, defined in the subclass StillImageRepresentation, overrides the cardinality on hasFileValue, defined in the superclass Representation. In other words, the more general cardinality in the superclass is replaced by a more specific cardinality in the base class. Since incunabula:page is a subclass of StillImageRepresentation, it inherits the cardinality on hasStillImageFileValue. As a result, a page must have at least one image file attached to it.

Here's another example of cardinality inheritance. The class knora-base:Resource has a cardinality for knora-base:seqnum. The idea is that resources of any type could be arranged in some sort of sequence. As we saw above, incunabula:page is a subclass of knora-base:Resource. But incunabula:page has its own cardinality for incunabula:seqnum, which is a subproperty of knora-base:seqnum. Once again, the subclass's cardinality on the subproperty replaces the superclass's cardinality on the superproperty: a page is allowed to have an incunabula:seqnum, but it is not allowed to have a knora-base:seqnum.

Last update: January 19, 2023