W3C

Simple part-whole relations in OWL Ontologies

W3C Editor's Draft 11 Aug 2005

This version:
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/simple-part-whole-relations-v1.5.html
Latest version:
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/
Previous versions:
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/simple-part-whole-relations-v1.3.html
Editors:
Alan Rector, University of Manchester
Chris Welty, IBM Research
Contributors:
Natasha Noy, Stanford University
Evan Wallace, NIST

Copyright © 2004 W3C® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark, document use and software licensing rules apply.


Abstract

Representing part-whole relations is a very common issue for those developing ontologies for the Semantic Web. OWL does not provide any built-in primitives for part-whole relations (as it does for the subclass relation), but contains sufficient expressive power to capture most, but not all, of the common cases. The study of part-whole relations is an entire field in itself - "mereology" - this note is intended only to deal with straightforward cases for defining classes involving part-whole relations.

Status of this Document

This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at http://www.w3.org/TR/.

This document will be a part of a larger document that will provide an introduction and overview of all ontology design patterns produced by the Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group.

This document is a W3C Working Draft and is expected to change. The SWBPD WG does not expect this document to become a Recommendation. Rather, after further development, review and refinement, it will be published and maintained as a WG Note.

As a candidate Public Working Draft, we encourage public comments. Please send comments to public-swbp-wg@w3.org

Publication as a draft does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This document is a draft and may be updated, replaced or made obsolete by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress.


Use cases

Parts and wholes are ubiquitous:

  1. A parts inventory for the devices made in a factory in which we want to be able to find the "explosion" of parts required (i.e. for each part we can see the sub-parts).
  2. A fault finding system for an device in which we want to progressively narrow down the functional region of the fault.
  3. An anatomy representation such as the Digital Anatomist Foundational Model of Anatomy [FMA]
  4. A document retrieval system, in which documents are divided into chapters, sections, paragraphs etc. (However, note that parthood, as explained in this document, does not take order into account).

General issues

Basics

Part-whole relations are one of the basic structuring primitives of the universe, and many applications require representation of them - catalogues of parts, fault diagnosis, anatomy, geography, etc. In fact, the study of part-whole relations is a large field in its own right - "mereology" and "mereotopology" - and has been the topic of many papers, see the references section for a useful list.

RDF Schema and OWL do not contain specific primitives for part-whole relations (as they do for the subclass relation, for example). OWL, and to a lesser degree RDFS, do support sufficient machinery to express much of what one may want to represent about part-whole relations. Where it does not, there are a number of "work-arounds" that suffice in some situations. This note will provide basic schemas for expressing part-whole relations in RDF Schema and OWL.

Transitive relations - parts and direct parts.

An important and common requirement for the basic relation from a part to its whole that it is transitive, i.e. if A is part of B, and B is part of C, then A is part of C. OWL provides a general construct for declaring properties to be transitive. If we define a property, say partOf, to be transitive, then any reasoner conformant with OWL will draw the conclusions that both A and B are parts of C.

In many applications, what is needed is not a list of all parts but rather a list of the next level breakdown of parts, the "direct parts" of a given entity. It is therfore often useful to use the property hierarchy to define a subproperty of hasPart that is not transitive and links each subpart just to the next level. For these examples we shall call this subproperty hasPart_directly. Note of course that the mere idea of a "direct" part is subjective, one may invent intermediate direct parts depending on numerous factors, or eliminate them. For example, we may choose not to represent engine as a part of cars, but rather represent all the components of engines as direct car parts. Grouping subparts into larger parts may also be subjective, a common example is a flywheel in a car, which can be viewed as an engine part or a transmission part in an ontology that includes those classes.

Choosing whether to use partOf or hasPart

OWL supports inverse relations, so we can define an inverse of partOf, say hasPart. For any two individuals I1 and I2, if "I1 partOf I2" then "I2 hasPart I1". However, care must be taken when using inverses in restrictions on classes. To say that "All As are parts of some B" does not imply that "All Bs have some As as parts", i.e. the restriction
(Class A partial restriction(partOf someValuesFrom(B))
does not imply
(Class B partial restriction(partOf someValuesFrom(A))

Therefore, if we want to say both that "all As are parts of some B" and "all Bs have part some A", we have to assert each statement separately. Such pairs of statements are sometimes called "reciprocals".

Unfortunately, all current OWL reasoners scale very badly for large part-whole hierarchies connected by both hasPart and partOf. Therefore, if reasoners are to be used, it is usually necessary to choose to use either partOf or hasPart but not both. Often it is preferable to use partOf because the most common queries and class definitions are for the parts of things, e.g. the class of all parts of a car.

Individuals vs. Classes

The examples and patterns in this document take two different approaches to representing part-whole relationships. The first pattern provides an RDFS and OWL schema for representing actual parts - instances of the classes in the ontology pattern, that may be useful e.g. in an inventory system in which a system has an instance for each part being held. The subsequent patterns deal with part-whole relationships for so-called hypothetical entities. These patterns are not meant to be used with instances, rather they are intended to represent the typical components of an aggregate whole in a way that allows a system to reason about what parts a whole may have, and how they are related.


Representation Pattern 1: Representing part-whole for individuals

We can define hasPart as a property in RDF Schema or OWL, just as we might for the owner relation. If limited to RDFS, there is not much one can say about the property at all, except as noted above to make a sub-property for direct parts:

  1. Define a property partOf.
  2. Define a property partOf_directly as subproperty of partOf.
  3. If using RDF Schema:
  4. If using OWL:
  5. Express the part-whole relations amongst individuals using property values in RDF.

Example

Consider a (over simplified) description of an individual car (an instance of the class Car), that has an engine, headlights, and wheels.

Note the the representation of individuals in this pattern is the same for RDF Schema and OWL. The definition of the classes and properties is different for the two languages. Therefore, we present the two version of the definitions for classes and properties and then show the definition for individuals. Note that the example in OWL shows full transitivity and inverses, however as noted above one may wish to limit this to one or the other direction.

The code for classes and properties in RDF Schema

partOf
  a rdf:Property .

partOf_directly
  a rdf:Property ;
  rdfs:subPropertyOf partOf .
  
Car
  a rdfs:Class .

Engine
  a rdfs:Class .

Headlight
  a rdfs:Class .

Wheel
  a rdfs:Class .

As shown, there is not much one can express in RDFS, and as a result it will not be used for the remainder of this note.

The code for classes and properties in OWL DL

To begin with, let's set up a special importable ontology for the simple family of part relations discussed here, as these will be reused in subsequent examples.

Ontology( <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/part.owl>

  ObjectProperty(hasPart_directly inverseOf(partOf_directly))
  ObjectProperty(partOf Transitive inverseOf(hasPart))
  SubPropertyOf(hasPart_directly hasPart)
  SubPropertyOf(partOf_directly partOf)
)

This is about all you can ever say about the part relations in general using OWL, but in order to put these to use we can define some classes of things with parts and then restrict specific classes to have the appropriate values. In the below example, we import the part ontology above and also give it a namespace nickname (part):

Namespace(part = <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/part.owl#>)

Ontology( <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/example1.owl>

 Annotation( owl:imports <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/part.owl>)

 Class(Car partial 
  restriction(part:hasPart allValuesFrom(unionOf(Wheel Engine Headlight))))
 Class(Engine partial)
 Class(Headlight partial)
 Class(Wheel partial)
)

Individuals

car123
  a Car ;

engine123
  a Engine ;
  part:partOf_directly car123 . 

headlight123a
  a Headlight ;
  part:partOf_directly car123 .

  ...

Discussion

In this example we have described individual parts of an individual car. Note that we do not say anything about whether cars in general have engines or wheels, nor how many they might have. If we need to describe composition at the level of a whole class of objects (e.g., all cars have engines), we need to use the partOf relation at the class level, as in the following patterns.

A common modeling pitfall in general when representing parts is to create a class that is the superclass of all the possible classes that can be car parts, and use this class instead of the union class in the restriction on hasPart for Cars. It is important to realize that making, e.g. Engine a subclass of e.g. CarPart means that all engines are car parts - which is simply not true (engines can be parts of boats, planes, generators, etc.).


Representation Pattern 2: Representing a part-whole hierarchy

  1. Import the partOf relation ontology defined above.
  2. Choose whether to use the partOf or hasPart relation as the basic relation amongst classes. If in doubt, choose partOf. In this example, we use both relations, noting that for large examples one must make a choice.
  3. Express the part-whole relations amongst individuals using hasValue() with partOf_directly.
  4. Express the part-whole relations amongst classes using someValuesFrom() with partOf_directly.
  5. If there are any universal (allValuesFrom) constraints, add those. In this example, we do not have any.

There should now be sufficient information to make basic inferences about parts, e.g. to define a class of all parts of the car, car door, etc. For this example, we are concerned with describing the intuitive composition of cars, i.e. that cars are made of engines, wheels, headlights, etc., rather than prescribing a schema for instances of these classes.

Examples

Consider a (over simplified) description of a car and its decomposition into parts, subparts, etc.

Cars have parts Engine, Headlight, Wheel

Engines have parts Crankcase, Carburetor

Headlights have parts headlight bulb, reflector

The OWL abstract syntax for the above example would then be:

Namespace(part	= <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/part.owl#>)

Ontology( <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/example2.owl>

 Annotation( owl:imports <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/part.owl>)

 Class(Car partial)
 Class(Engine partial 
  restriction(part:partOf_directly someValuesFrom(Car)))
 Class(Carburetor partial 
  restriction(part:partOf_directly someValuesFrom(Engine)))
 Class(Crankcase partial 
  restriction(part:partOf_directly someValuesFrom(Engine)))
 Class(Headlight partial 
  restriction(part:partOf_directly someValuesFrom(Car)))
 Class(HeadlightBulb partial 
  restriction(part:partOf_directly someValuesFrom(Headlight)))
 Class(Reflector partial 
  restriction(part:partOf_directly someValuesFrom(Headlight)))
 Class(Wheel partial 
  restriction(part:partOf_directly someValuesFrom(Car)))
)

Discussion

Several issues arise even from such a simple example. To begin with, the representation using existential restrictions (i.e. owl:someValuesFrom) does not clearly communicate all of the semantics we may want for car parts. For example, a strict reading of the definition of the Crankcase class above is that a crankcase is part of at least one engine. In point of fact, a crankcase cannot be part of more than one engine. We may be tempted to add a cardinality restriction (e.g. maxCardinality 1) on partOf to the definition of crankcase, but this would be a mistake; since partOf is transitive, a crankcase is also part of the car the engine is part of. Note also that OWL-DL does not allow transitive properties to have any cardinality restrictions. In general it is best to avoid placing restrictions (including range restrictions) on transitive properties at all.

It would make more sense to add a restriction on the partOf_directly property in the definition of these classes, when it is appropriate. A single crankcase cannot be a direct part of more than one engine, an engine cannot be a direct part of more than one car, etc., so in these cases a maxCardinality restriction would make the semantics more clear. On the other hand, there is always a tradeoff when employing a reasoner between how precise your semantics are and how much information the reasoner has to consider. In this case, adding a cardinality restriction on all the partOf_directly properties would significantly increase the amount of information handed to a reasoner. One must consider precisely what the ontology will be used for to determine which is more important (enforcing semantic constraints vs. classification). The examples in this note are aimed primarily at use-cases in which no instances of the classes are present.

From the top down, we may also be tempted to add a cardinality restriction on cars, indicating the number of parts of each type they have. For example, the typical car has one engine, four wheels, and two headlights. This is an issue known as qualified cardinality restrictions (QCRs), which are the subject of another OEP note. [QCR]

When considering restrictions on the partOf_directly property for different kinds of parts, the issue of using a universal (owl:allValuesFrom) vs. an existential restriction arises. Many different kinds of things have engines (boats, planes, etc.), and in fact even car engines can exist without being part of a car. This indicates that, ontologically, the existential restriction is simply not true. However, what we are trying to capture here is, as mentioned above, not a schema for specifying actual concrete parts, but the intuitive composition of cars that corresponds to statements in English like, "Cars are made of engines, wheels, headlights, ..."


Representation Pattern 3: Defining classes for Parts

  1. Extend ontology with classes of parts for each level in the part hierarchy (e.g. Car Parts, Engine Parts, etc.), in such a way that a taxonomy can be derived automatically.

Examples

Extending the ontology in pattern 2, we can define the classes: CarPart and CarPart_directly:

Namespace(ex2	= <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/example2.owl#>)
Namespace(part	= <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/part.owl#>)

Ontology( <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/example3.owl>

 Annotation( owl:imports <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/example2.owl>)

 Class(CarPart complete 
  restriction(part:partOf someValuesFrom(ex2:Car)))
 Class(CarPart_directly complete 
  restriction(part:partOf_directly someValuesFrom(ex2:Car)))
)

A classifier could then infer that CarPart_directly subsumes Engine, Headlight, Wheel and that CarPart subsumes CarPart_directly, Crankcase, Carburator, HeadlightBulb, Reflector.

This simple list may not be what we want, in which case it is necessary systematically to define a class for the parts of each part, e.g.

 Class(EnginePart complete 
  restriction(part:partOf someValuesFrom(ex2:Engine)))
 Class(HeadlightPart complete 
  restriction(part:partOf someValuesFrom(ex2:Headlight)))
If all are defined in this way we get a hierarchy from the classifier (ignoring CarPart_directly):
CarPart
  Engine
  EnginePart
    Crankcase
    Carburetor
  Headlight
  HeadlightPart
    HeadlightBulb
    Reflector
  Wheel

Discussion

These classes exemplify one of the main reasons to choose existential restrictions on the direct part properties over universal restrictions (as discussed in the previous pattern). A classifier would not be able to infer the hierarchy above using universal restrictions on the partOf_direct property in the first pattern, unless there were minimum cardinality restrictions on the property as well.

Ontologically, these classes by themselves are reasonable, a "car part" is indeed anything that is part of a car, however when combined with the existential restrictions on the direct properties, a classifier would infer the hierarchy above. These kinds of hierarchies seem harmless at first glance, but in some contexts are completely wrong: not all engines are car parts, some are boat engines, etc. On the other hand, an engine for a 1969 Porsche 911E is generally considered a "car part" regardless of whether it is in a car or not (it may be for sale). Recall again, however, that the intent here is to create an intuitive model of what "whole cars" are made of, not a schema for concrete instances of these classes.

This approach adds elegance and simplicity by assuming that an automated reasoner will do the work of building the class taxonomy. In other words, rather than saying explicitly that Headlight (or any other part) is a subclass of CarPart e.g.:

 Class(Headlight partial CarPart
  restriction(part:partOf someValuesFrom(ex2:Car)))
we let a reasoner infer it, resulting in the more compact expression in the ontology above. It has been argued that such an approach increases maintainability and modularity [R-NORM].


Representation Pattern 4: Faults in parts and wholes

  1. Extend ontology with classes of faults that account for the part hierarchy, e.g. allow a reasoner to conclude that a fault in a part is a fault in the whole.

Distinguishing parts from kinds

Although both part-whole relations and subclassOf generate hierarchies, it is important not to confuse the part-whole hierarchy with the subclassOf hierarchy. This is easily done because in many library and related applications, part-whole and subclass relations are deliberately conflated into a single "broader than / narrower than" axis. For example consider the following:
Vehicle
  Car
    Engine
      Crankcase
        Aluminum Crankcase

"Car" is a kind of "Vehicle", but "Engine" is a part of a "Car", "Crankcase" is a part of an "Engine", but "Aluminum Crankcase" is a kind of "Crankcase". Such hierarchies serve well for navigation, however they they are conflating the two relations (partOf and subClassOf). Statements about "all vehicles" do not necessarily, or even probably, hold for "all engines". Such hierarchies do need to be recreated in situations that obey the rule "A fault of the part is a kind of fault of the whole".

Examples

You can call for assistance with a fault in your car if your crankcase is damaged. The following hierarchy is a correct subclassOf or "kind of" hierarchy of a type that we need to reproduce often in OWL:

Fault in Car
  Fault in Engine
    Fault in Crankcase
      Fault in Aluminum Crankcase

The easy way to say this is that a "fault in a car" is really a "fault in a car or any of its parts" [SEP]. If we use the property hasLocus to locate the fault in a particular part of the car, then we can easily define axioms for the classes of FaultInCar and FaultInEngine:

Namespace(ex2	= <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/example2.owl#>)
Namespace(ex3	= <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/example3.owl#>)

Ontology( <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/example4.owl>

 Annotation( owl:imports <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/example3.owl>)

 ObjectProperty(hasLocus)

 Class(AluminumCrankcase partial ex2:Crankcase)
 Class(Fault partial)
 Class(FaultInCar complete 
  intersectionOf(Fault 
                 restriction(hasLocus someValuesFrom(unionOf(ex2:Car ex3:CarPart)))))
 Class(FaultInEngine complete 
  intersectionOf(Fault 
                 restriction(hasLocus someValuesFrom(unionOf(ex2:Engine ex3:EnginePart)))))
)

This may look tedious, but can actually be achieved quite simply with scripting tools or the ability to "clone and edit" classes easily. The point is that an automated reasoner can deduce that a fault located in an alumninum crankcase is a fault in the engine and in the car.

Discussion

In certain domains, most notably medicine, we generally understand that while body parts (e.g. a heart) can exist outside of a body, they do not normally do so. Thus it makes sense to say, in general, "A fault in the heart is a fault in the body," without having a particular heart or body in mind, and it makes sense to reason over classes defined that way. For other domains, most notably manufacturing, it is more common for parts to exist outside of some whole, and so it may not generally be true that a fault in an engine is a fault in a car (if the engine is not in a car), just as it may not be generally true that an engine is a car part. In these cases, the capability to reason over classes may not be that useful, and again the existential restriction on the direct properties may not make sense.


Representation Pattern 5: Reflexive parts

  1. Extend ontology with classes that approximate the fact that a whole is often considered part of itself (reflexivity).

Examples

Classically, the part of relation is reflexive, that is it includes the thing itself, e.g. that a "car is a part of a car". OWL does not have any built-in primitives for reflexivity (as it does for transitivity and inverses), but as shown above, we can use a pattern in defining classes to approximate this by combining the class with the class of its parts. It is sometimes convenient to define a "..._Reflexive" class for each item, e.g.:
 Class(CarPart_reflexive complete unionOf(Car CarPart))

When reflexive part classes are defined, it simplifies the definition of faults (in fact, this is often used as a logical argument for why the partOf relation is reflexive), as we do not need to explicitly put the unionOf in the restriction on the hasLocus property, as in example 4. Extending example 3 again with these simplified definitions just for car parts and faults in cars, we have:

Namespace(ex2	= <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/example2.owl#>)
Namespace(ex3	= <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/example3.owl#>)

Ontology( <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/example5.owl>

 Annotation( owl:imports <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/example3.owl>)

 ObjectProperty(hasLocus)

 Class(CarPart_reflexive complete unionOf(ex2:Car ex3:CarPart))
 Class(Fault partial)
 Class(FaultInCar complete 
  intersectionOf(Fault 
                 restriction(hasLocus someValuesFrom(CarPart_reflexive))))
)

Discussion

Logically these classes do not give us reflexivity at all, a reflexive property is one that holds between an object and itself, not between an object and something in the same class (which is, technically, what the CarPart_reflexive definition says). It is not possible in OWL to state such a restriction or inference, however, and when reasoning only over the classes and properties in an ontology this will suffice.


Considerations

Additional Background

Other relations that follow the same pattern as faults

A number of other relations follow the same pattern as faults, e.g. "Repairs on a part are kinds of repairs on the whole". However, not all relations follow this pattern, e.g. "Purchase of a part is not purchase of the whole" (you can buy the wheels off a car without buying the car).

Relation to classic Mereology

The classic study of parts and wholes, mereology, has three axioms: the part-of relation is

OWL does not have built-in primitives for antisymmetric or reflexive properties, nor is there any work-around for them. In most cases this causes no problems, but it does mean that if you create a cycle in the part-of hierarchy (usually by accident) it will go unnoticed by the classifier (although it may cause the classifier to run forever.)

Furthermore, in mereology, since everything is a part of itself, we have to define "proper parts" as "parts not equal to the whole". Whereas in OWL we have to do the reverse: i.e. define "parts" (analogous to "proper parts") and then define "reflexive parts" in terms of "parts".

Relations that are not simple part-whole relations in the sense above

There are a number of relations easily confused with part-whole relations. Interested readers should consult [Flavours of part of]. However, a brief list includes:

More on partOf and hasPart

In some contexts it is "more universal" to use partOf, in others to use hasPart. For example, all cars have wheels, but not all wheels are parts of cars. On the other hand, all leaves are parts of plants (at least at some time), but not all plants have leaves. The inability of existing classifiers to cope with ontologies mixing partOf and hasPart is a significant limitation.

Flavours of part-whole relations

Many authors discuss different subtypes of of the part_of relation. In most cases these can be represented as subproperties of partOf, but the various flavours of part-whole relation are beyond the scope of this note. See [Flavours of part of].

References

[SEP]
Hahn, U., Schulz, S. and Romacker, M. Part-whole reasoning: a case study in medical ontology engineering. IEEE Intelligent Systems and their Applications, 14 (5). 59-67.
[Specified Values]
Representing Specified Values in OWL: "value partitions" and "value sets", Alan Rector, Editor, W3C Working Draft, 3 August 2004, http://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-specified-values/ .
[OWL Overview]
OWL Web Ontology Language Overview, Deborah L. McGuinness and Frank van Harmelen, Editors, W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004, http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-features-20040210/ . Latest version available at http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/ .
[OWL Guide]
OWL Web Ontology Language Guide, Michael K. Smith, Chris Welty, and Deborah L. McGuinness, Editors, W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004, http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-guide-20040210/ . Latest version available at http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-guide/ .
[OWL Semantics and Abstract Syntax]
OWL Web Ontology Language Semantics and Abstract Syntax, Peter F. Patel-Schneider, Patrick Hayes, and Ian Horrocks, Editors, W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004, http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-semantics-20040210/ . Latest version available at http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-semantics/ .
[RDF Primer]
RDF Primer, Frank Manola and Eric Miller, Editors, W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004, http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-primer-20040210/ . Latest version available at http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-primer/ .
[QCR]
Expressing Qualified Cardinality restrictions in OWL, Guus Schreiber and Alan Rector, Editors.
[RDF Semantics]
RDF Semantics, Pat Hayes, Editor, W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004, http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-mt-20040210/ . Latest version available at http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-mt/ .
[RDF Vocabulary]
RDF Vocabulary Description Language 1.0: RDF Schema, Dan Brickley and R. V. Guha, Editors, W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004, http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-schema-20040210/ . Latest version available at http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/ .
[R-NORM]
KCAP paper. Alan Rector.
[FMA]
Foundational Model of Anatomy. Digital Anatomist Project, Cornelius Rosse, Principal Investigator.
[Flavours of part of]
Odell, J.J. Six different kinds of composition. Journal of Object Oriented Programming, 5 (8). 10-15.
Winston, M., Chaffin, R. and Hermann, D. A taxonomy of part-whole relations. Cognitive Science, 11. 417-444
Artale, A., Franconi, E. and Pazzi, L. Part-whole relations in object-centered systems: An overview. Data and Knowledge Engineering, 20. 347-383

Changes