Naming conventions for the RDF/OWL

[rickskyy]

There were discussions about naming conventions for Data properties, Object properties and Classes used in the development of the odml ontology. Currently we are using different naming schemes (e.g. odml:terminology, odml:name, odml:hasDocument etc.)
In this issue I want to share some resources I found about the topic and propose to stick to the described rules below.

Here is the description of Ontology Best Practices.
http://wiki.opensemanticframework.org/index.php/Ontology_Best_Practices#cite_note-odp3-3

The page contains links to various resources, tutorials and software (e.g. Protege http://protege.stanford.edu/ - open-source ontology editor).

In the chapter Naming and Vocabulary Best Practices there is the detailed description of naming conventions. Here are some important statements:

1. Use CamelCase notation for these classes. Name all concepts as single nouns.
2. Name all properties as verb senses (so that triples may be actually read); e.g., hasProperty. Try to use mixedCase notation for naming these predicates.
3. Try to assign logical and short names to namespaces used for your vocabularies, such as foaf:XXX, umbel:XXX or skos:XXX, with a maximimum of five letters preferred.
4. Provide inverse properties where it makes sense, and adjust the verb senses in the predicates to accommodate. For example, <Father> <hasChild> <Janie> would be expressed inversely as <Janie> <isChildOf> <Father>.
5. Give all concepts and properties a definition. In its own ontologies, Structured Dynamics uses the property of skos:definition, though others such as rdfs:comment or dc:description are also commonly used.

Following the rules described I think we should rename all odml properties to mixedCase with has prefix like odml:name -> odml:hasName, odml:doc-version -> odml:hasDocVersion, odml:terminology -> odml:hasTerminology etc. As I understood by exploring resources the naming is not influenced by the type of the property (Object, Data or Annotation properties).

Here is also a useful resource: "The Practical Guide to Building OWL Ontologies using Protege 4"
http://owl.cs.manchester.ac.uk/publications/talks-and-tutorials/protg-owl-tutorial/

[mpsonntag]

Very cool, thx for the detailed description! For now and for us I think we should go with the mixedCase for properties.

[mpsonntag]

We should also try to provide inverse properties for hasDocument, hasTerminology, hasSection and hasProperty. I am not sure whether an inverse property for hasValue makes sense.