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We are updating how we maintain this repository. The reason for the update is to make it easier for us to address user requests and push updates more regularly. In doing so, a new default branch will be created. This branch will not have the same development history as the current master. Merging changes based off the old master branch into this new one, while possible, is not a straightforward process.

This issue will be used to notify users of when the change happens, most likely sometime later next week, as well as address any questions about how to resolve possible conflicts. We would appreciate some feedback from our users. +1s or likes in approval would be helpful. Anyone who thinks this change might cause troubles for their workflow should say so now. We will do our best to help in making the transition. The change should not be difficult, providing CCO files were only extended from and not modified directly.

I have a need for software libraries using common core's representation of information entities. Later on in this project, I foresee wanting software libraries for more common core ontologies. Are there any open source, or closed source, libraries that I could use, and if not, are any planned? Python or Java would be preferable.

1. There are a few classes like 'machine element', 'electronic component', 'vehicle frame part', etc that would benefit from a parent class 'Artifact Element', defined as 'an artifact that is designed to be part of an Artifact'. These various 'designed to be part of X' classes could then be refactored under this parent.

For instance, this would be helpful for finding those weapon elements (e.g. triggers, barrels, shells, sights, etc) that are not weapons and may not be parts of weapons, and which otherwise are scattered throughout the artifact list.

2. Other important subclasses of 'Artifact Element' could also be 'Infrastructure Element', where every instance of the class is designed to be part of some piece of infrastructure. E.g. ceiling, roof, truss, turret, gable, etc.. similarly for 'Vehicle Element' and 'Computer element'.

Principle of Single Inheritance:

This principle does not prohibit the use of subclass or equivalent class axioms whereby a class is defined to be a subclass or equivalent class of an anonymous class. The OWL language provides the means to express facts about entities using relations to other entities. For example, a fact such as “Automobile has_part some Engine” uses the has_part relation to relate each automobile to at least one engine. The semantics of this fact is that Automobile has been made a subclass of the anonymous class “thing having at least one engine as part”. The class is anonymous because it is not part of the asserted taxonomy. The set of subclass and equivalent class axioms forms the inferred taxonomy of an ontology. In this inferred taxonomy classes previously anonymous become explicit and the principle of single inheritance is no longer in force. For further details see: (Smith & Ceusters, 2010)

This is a little confusing as it confuses assertion with namedClass v classExpression distinction.

If I assert "car SubClassOf has_part some engine" it's still an assertion, not inferred.

I think what you want to say is:

1. Ontology editors should only assert one named superclass
2. The inferred/released edition of the ontology may have multiple direct inferred superclasses. This will be especially common with compositional classes which form a lattice/polyhierarchy on reasoning

Note that I think 1 is a good engineering rule of thumb but would not elevate to a principle.

This could be my weird ear, but I read 'Type' as a frequent synonym for 'Class' and I don't see a place in CCO where they are distinguished. This means sub-relations of 'is about' look like relations between classes rather than between instances. For instance:

prescribes =def "For all types T1 and T2, if T1 prescribes T2, then there is some instance of T1, t1, that serves as a rule or guide to some instance of T2, t2 (if T2 is a type of bfo:Occurrent) or that serves as a model for some instance of T2, t2 (if T2 is a type of bfo:Continuant)."

The natural read is to take 'type' to mean 'class', particularly since only classes have instances. But then no instance is a class.

If you agree this is mislead, perhaps we can work on a rephrase.

There is a need for the classes 'Animal' and 'Plant' in my group. Could these be added to CCO?

I was using the paradigm for a person's address in Modeling Information with the Common Core Ontologies (Section 4.1). It seems to me that the pattern is incomplete. It locates the geospatial region for a zip code within a state. The thing is, many such geospatial regions are located within a state – within a city, for that matter. What is the relationship between a residential facility and its zip code? Is the picture missing an additional located_in between those two individuals?

I've been comparing the Time Ontology to the OWL Time Ontology. Here are some small suggestions for the CCO:

1. There are a few relations in CCO-Time that seem like sub relations of another relation. For instance, 'interval is after' and 'interval is before' are both sub relations of 'interval disjoint'.

2. I don't see 'Time Zones' represented in the CCO's Time. Is there another way they are being treated?

3. Is there a place in the CCO for temporal reference systems?

4. For consistency, why not treat the subclasses of one-dimensional temporal region presently in the CCO (e.g. Day, Decade, Hour, Minute, etc) as instances of temporal units like the measurements of units ontology does for units?

Just a note that it would be convenient (since you're saving local files anyway) to have the BFO artifacts here in Turtle rather than in OWL. Although this doesn't matter for those working in Protege, TopBraid won't open files with an owl extension.

The definition of has process part is "For processes P1 and P2, P1 has process part P2 if and only if P2 occurs on a temporal interval that is during the temporal interval of P1 and P2 either provides an input to P1, recieves an output of P1 or both." Correction: recieves --> receives.

There is a class 'subnational entity identifier' that is defined as identifying a subnational entity, but subnational entity is undefined. It appears to be a geospatial region located inside a country--but does this include, for instance, the territories occupied by the country?

The class 'Information Structure Entity' is defined as: "A Generically Dependent Continuant that is not an Information Content Entity (ICE) but which is complemented or complementable by some ICE to create another ICE."

There is, however no object property such as 'complements' in CCO, and the relationship between, say, a cell in a spreadsheet and the information in any copy of a spreadsheet file. This is also not discussed in the 'Model Language with CCO' doc, but seems highly relevant. This leaves it unclear how to represent the relationship between instances of ISE and instances of ICE. Note: I am particularly concerned with software files, which I understand the CCO treats as IBEs.

Is there a preferred way for handling damage to property? I thought it might be under 'Act of Violence', but that class is more restrictive.

This is standard for mapping ontology URIs to local file paths

Artefacts like clothing and combustion chamber are not currently declared disjoint, but should be.
A piece of clothing is designed to be a piece of clothing and not designed to be a combustion chamber. Therefore, with the exception of a rare class that might conceivably be designed to be both, these universals are disjoint.
For the exception of "joint function" classes, I suggest the better option is to specifically assert a joint function class. For example, artifacts exist that are both chair and stepladder. However, rather than asserting that the universal chair overlaps with the universal stepladder , it would be clearer (i.e. closer to the normal use of the terms) to keep those universals disjoint, and create a special universal for stepladder-chair which represents the exceptional combination.

"Stasis" is currently defined as "A Process in which some Independent Continuant endures and one or more of the dependent entities it bears does not change in kind or intensity."

This seems to me to be ambiguous between

(a) a Stasis occuring on some (random) fiat temporal interval during which "some Independent Continuant endures and one or more of the dependent entities it bears does not change in kind or intensity"

and

(b) a Stasis occuring on some longest continous temporal interval during which "some Independent Continuant endures and one or more of the dependent entities it bears does not change in kind or intensity".

Both interpretations seem to be useful.

Figure 11 from the overview paper seems to suggest interpretation (b).

If (b) is supposed to be the intended interpretation, one could (and maybe should) also assert that a "Stasis" is always "process preceded by" some "Gain" and always "process precedes" some "Loss". Although if "Gain" and "Loss" have temporal extension we might not even want to have them in cases where e. g. a continuant bears a role for the entirety of its (the continuant's) existence ("history").

If the intended interpretation is (a), there should be a universal for (b), maybe "Total Stasis" or "Maximal Stasis".

I want to request the term “Representation” to be included in CCO based on the necessity and suitability of this term in modeling Specification (mainly design specifications). Apology for making this note a little extensive, but it was required to corroborate some points.

A product design is a set of specifications, e.g. functional (teleology), component and assembly (mereonomy and weak/strong connection), material (constituents), geometry, dimension and tolerance (structural). Specifications are not Quality because Quality instances only inhere_in an independent continuant but such artifact (a particular product) (Material_Entity) may not necessarily exist during design phase.

We can use Information Content Entity (ICE) to define specifications; however, ICEs need to generically depend (g.depend) on a material entity (def.). As the physical product does not exist at the design phase, what material entity should the ICE g.depend on?

(A related question: is “g.depending on a material entity” a necessary condition for ICE?)
In a possible model, these specification ICEs may g.depend on an Information Bearing Artifact (IBA), which may suitably denote the product design document (CAD file).

Precisely, a product design is a collection of various specifications (mental qualities) of a “conceptual product”, still lacking embodiment. Moreover, these specifications need to conform to the actual Qualities of the product (particular), which is manufactured following the design (universal).

In the article “Aboutness: Towards foundations for the information artifact ontology,” by B. Smith and W. Ceusters, “Representation” is defined as “a QUALITY which is_about or is intended to be about a PORTION OF REALITY(POR).” This notion is extremely suitable for representing specifications as explained: “Note that ‘representation’ is thus more comprehensive in scope than ‘ICE,’ even on our proposed more inclusive definition of the latter, since an ICE must in every case be about some portion of reality, where the aboutness in question must always be veridical, so that ‘being about’ is a success verb. A representation, in contrast, is required merely to intend to be about something, and this intention might fail.” (Smith, 2012)

Representation can be treated as quality universal, which concretizes the specification ICEs, acting as universals expressing various product specifications.
Representation = Information_Quality_Entity and inheres_in some Information_Bearing_Artifact and is_represented_by some Information_Content_Entity

In fact, the qualities inhering_in a product instance should conform to corresponding design specifications, which was inhering_in IBA at the design phase. These conformance criteria may be expressed as,
x is_conformant_to y = x is a Quality or Artifact and y is a Representation and there exists some ICE g such that g is_about x and y concretizes g.

Currently preceded_by only allows usage with processes. I am requesting that we change the domain and range to include stasis and process aggregate in order to have a more generalized preceded_by to work with more use cases.

There are a family of unit types that we would like to see represented in the common core. Below are examples. For each, there are a number of other unit associated unit types. For instance, listed below is kilogram per square centimeter, but there is also gram per square centimeter and kilogram per square meter.

1. quartic meter: m^4
2. kilogram square meter: kg⋅m^2
3. kilogram per square centimeter: kg/cm^2
4. gram per cubic centimeter: g/cm^3
5. newton meter: N⋅m

Best,
Binbin Zhang

Presently, Representational ICE is defined:

A Descriptive Information Content Entity that consists of a set of propositions or an image that represents some Entity.

However, CCO also defines 'image' as an information bearing entity. Hence, the definition is misleading.

Perhaps a different label for the present class 'image' is all that is needed. Something like 'Concretized Image' or 'Image inhering in a Bearer'.

Hi,

The object properties here are no longer supported:
https://github.com/CommonCoreOntology/CommonCoreOntologies/blob/master/BFO%20Version/ro.owl

For more background see
https://github.com/oborel/obo-relations/wiki/DifferencesWithOldRO

Since 2010ish there has been a new RO, which overlaps a lot with your extended relations (not surprising, many are in BFO reference doc). I noted this on our tracker:
oborel/obo-relations#254

Would you like to join one of our RO calls and/or mail list to discuss RO/CCO alignment?

"condition described by" is defined as "c condition_described_by p iff p is an instance of a Performance Specification, and p has part d, and d is an instance of a Descriptive Information Content Entity, and p prescribes an entity s, and c is an entity that is causally relevant to s existing as prescribed by p."

"describes condition" is defined as "p describes_condition c iff p is an instance of a Performance Specification, and p has part d, and d is an instance of a Descriptive Information Content Entity, and p prescribes an entity s, and c is an entity that is causally relevant to s existing as prescribed by p."

Isn't the relation between d and c "describes"? If so, shouldn't this be stated in the definitions?

My team is currently trying to create an ontology where the primary focus is tracking documents through a life cycle. With this, we need to represent how a document can be updated throughout the span of its life. I went through the CCO and PLC to see if there was anything that could represent this, but could only find things that only vaguely apply. I propose that the CCO add an Act of Modifying/Updating/Revising a Document in order to fill in the missing gap.

I believe the general approach of CCO is to not require via a class axiom that every instance of an artifact class is the bearer of a function, in order to allow that broken or nonfunctioning instances of a particular artifact class might remain instances of that class.

However, 'Vehicle' appears to have the subclass axiom:

'bearer of' some 'Conveyance Artifact Function'

Should this be removed?

"An Overview of Common Core Ontologies" categorizes the ExtendedRelationOntology and LewisianRelationOntology as a Mid-Level ontologies, but the namespaces contain 'Upper'.

<http://www.ontologyrepository.com/CommonCoreOntologies/Upper/ExtendedRelationOntology> 

http://www.ontologyrepository.com/CommonCoreOntologies/Upper/LewisianRelationOntology

I have a fix in my fork.   
Shall I submit a merge request?

The affected files are:
	modified:   ExtendedRelationOntology.ttl
	modified:   GeospatialOntology.ttl
	modified:   LewisianRelationOntology.ttl
	modified:   TimeOntology.ttl

1. Figure out how much overlap there is between CCO and OBO (either OBO-Core or specific domain ontologies)
2. Come up with a strategy: equivalence axioms vs ceding by one side

• CORE: only matches I see are document & plan
• ENVO: EnvironmentOntology/envo#625

Are there plans in a future version of CCO to include a subclass of material entity for substances/materials?
We are mapping in a legacy coding scheme which has large number of elements of the pattern:
XX_facility is a cco:Facility that extracts/processes/refines/stores/consumes ZZ_Material

It would be convenient to have a defined class to hook our extensive lists of raw materials, chemicals etc.

thanks

Since the class 'portion of processed material' also includes fluids and gases, this class appears to belong under material entity rather than object. Also, 'portion of material' should be the parent of 'portion of processed material', but presently the reverse is true, with every 'portion of material' being an instance of a 'portion of processed material'.

Also:

1. The class lacks a definition.
2. Not all of its children seem to necessarily be processed (e.g. portion of food, portion of waste material)
3. 'Article of Solid Waste' is introduced as a subclass of portion of waste, but it isn't clear what the difference is between a portion and an article.
4. Like the present treatment of 'portion of coolant', 'Portion of Waste' seems like a defined class consisting of a portion of material that bears a waste role, rather than an asserted class. The worry is that the assertion of the class can not account for the fact that the same portion can be waste in the context of one process, but a raw material to be used in a secondary process. The same seems true for portion of food and portion of fuel.

The definition of Measurement Information Content Entity is:

A Descriptive Information Content Entity that consists of a symbol that is a measure of the extent, dimensions, quanity, or quality of an Entity relative to some standard.

Change "quanity" to "quantity".

The URLs I've tried for the "has axiom label" annotations (e.g., http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/bfo/axiom/134-001) yield a 404 error. I assume this means the URLs are notional. Are there plans to make them resolve? Is there currently an online table listing all the BFO axioms?

My question pertains to section 4.12 (Effect of Aircraft Maintenance), page 19, in the document titled " Modeling Information with the Common Core Ontologies". The provided example is about A Non-Mission Capable (NMC )F/A-18 aircraft undergoes maintenance (replacement of center barrel) and is thus restored to Fully Mission Capable (FMC) status.

aircraft 1 ---bearer_of---->NMC 1 --- participates _in ----> stasis of NMC1

is "NMC 1" an instance of bfo: quality ? Why we can't link the aircraft to its status directly ?

Request for First Name, Middle Name, Last Name for persons.

I don't see that the domain and range of this relation are set, but I'm assuming they hold between roles and organizations.

This being the case, it would also be helpful to see a similar relation for those roles that are realized in belonging to a group that is not an organization. For instance, a protester role 'has group context' some protest group.

Receiving the following error when trying to open the allcore file in Protege: org.semanticweb.owlapi.rdf.rdfxml.parser.RDFParserException: [line=8:column=17] Expecting rdf:RDF element.

What to do?

Thank you!

Currently the definition of algorithm is: "A Directive Information Content Entity that prescribes the inputs and output of mathematical functions as well as workflow of execution for achieving an predefined objective." It contains a typo: an predefined --> a predefined.

Anyway, the biggest issue is that, I think, the definition is wrong, at least the part about mathematical functions. An algorithm does not prescribe inputs or outputs (in some sense of "prescribe", that is the job of the definition of a function). An algorithm is a finite list of commands 1) each of which requires only a finite amount of information and resources (energy, time, paper, etc.) to be carried out and such that 2) the entire process of implementing the algorithm on a given input is deterministic (i.e. every agent that follows the same algorithm and begins with the same input carries out the same operations producing, along the way, the same results in the same order). Note that an algorithmically specified procedure may not terminate, i.e. the output may not exist. For a reference, you can see Soare, Turing Computability pp. 3 ff.

Does CCO have a best practice when it comes to tracking the same software file in different formats? For instance, the same report in .txt. or .pdf, or the same image in .png or .jpeg? I don't see this issue mentioned in the modeling information with cco document.

Not sure if the OWL profile of CCO is of interest but a few things showed up as part of our inferencing experiments with CCO.

CCO has two axioms that cause it to be more than OWL-DL (which may/should cause a DL reasoner to ignore them) :

• SubClassOf(cco:SolarPanelSystem ObjectMinCardinality(1 ro:has_part cco:SolarPanel))
• SubClassOf(cco:SolarPanelSystem ObjectMinCardinality(0 ro:has_part cco:SecondaryCellElectricBattery))

These are beyond OWL-DL because ro:has_part is non-simple (I think).

The first one could be re-written (and bring it into OWL-DL profile) as

• SubClassOf(cco:SolarPanelSystem ObjectSomeValuesFrom(ro:has_part cco:SolarPanel))

I'm not sure if the second can be written within OWL-DL but it is a not actually a restriction anyway since having 0-n batteries will always be true for any class (tautology) , thus a reasoner ignoring this wouldn't be an issue. (Although asking Protege to explain this axiom causes it to generate a very large number (1,000s) of justifications (all useless) since any axiom can be used to justify a tautology.

Noticed that 5 CC Annotation properties use the same label as a OBO Annotation property:

• cco:definition - obo:IAO_0000115
• cco:definition_source - obo:IAO_0000119
• cco:elucidation - obo:IAO_0000600
• cco:example_of_usage - obo:IAO_0000112
• cco:term_editor - obo:IAO_0000117

cco:Skill (in AgentOntology) uses obo:IAO_0000115 instead of (?) cco:definition

Wasn't clear if these properties are meant as distinct concepts from their IAO counterparts.

Similarly, the Lewisian relations all have the same label as their non-Lewisian counterparts.

This was flagged in our OWL verbalizer code which looks for 2 or more entities in the import closure with the same label.

In Section 4.9 of Modeling Information with the Common Core Ontologies 1.0, the figure shows individuals act of motion 1 and speed 1 linked by a property named has profile. In Section 3.2 of An Overview of the Common Core Ontologies 1.0 and in the Extended Relation Ontology, the property is named has_process_part.

Suppose I have an Excel file that lists the machines in a factory. It has the following columns:

• machie name
• machine model
• machine weight (in lb)
• machine length (in inch)

Here the excel file (say EF1) is an instance of Information Bearing Entity and the columns of the excel file are instances of Information Content Entity that inhere in the Information Bearing Entity and they are about a real entity (the equipment). Suppose I am on the first row of the spreadsheet related to machine 1:

machine 1< ---- designates----(machine name 1) ----inheres in ---> EF1

I have only one instance of IBE (the excel file -EF1) with multiple values and units attached to it. Therefore:
EF1 ---- has_machine_name_value ----> text value
EF1 ----has_machine_model_value---->text value
EF1 ----has_machine_weight_value----> decimal value
EF1 ---has_measurement_unit_for_weight ---> pound measurement unit
EF1 ----has_machine_length_value----> decimal value
EF1 ---has_measurement_unit_for_lenght ---> inch measurement unit

is this the right way to connect IBE to values? Do I need to create different instances of the excel file for each column (which does not make sense to me).

I know the canonical version of CCO is in OWL, but would a FOL version be of any interest to CUBRC, particularly if it required no work on your end?

I'm looking for the relation between a member of a group or organization and the group or organization to which they belong. I don't see 'member of' among the relations, and 'has affiliate' is undefined.

Thoughts?

Agent should be under 'material entity' rather than 'independent continuant'.

Hey all,

The NL definition for 'realizes' restricts the range to 'Function' and also is derived from http://www.berkeleybop.org/ontologies/obo-all/ro_proposed/ro_proposed.owl, and this link appears to be broken.

Please revise to RO def and source.

http://www.ontobee.org/ontology/RO?iri=http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/BFO_0000055

The geospatial ontology declares some object properties, including has_spatial_part_of. This property is the only one in the ro:has_part property hierarchy whose name ends with "_of". All the inverse properties in the ro:part_of hierarchy end with "_of". Would "has_spatial_part" be a better name for the property?

The commit on Nov. 5 changed the class hierarchy. The corresponding cco:definition assertions didn't get updated. For example, cco:Birth was changed from a subclass of ProcessBeginning to a subclass of NaturalProcess, but the definition of cco:Birth still reads as follows:

A Process Beginning that is a temporal part of a Biographical Life.

The version 1.0.1 distributed in August does include an updated definition:

A Natural Process of bringing forth offspring.

0838e2d reflects a change from "Version 1.0.1" to "Version 1.1", but the main page's "branch > tags" has "Nothing to show".

Could you please add tags to the git repo to reflect the release points for these versions?

Thanks.

Found 8 instance where there was both a simple subclass axiom as well as more Aristotelian equivalent classes axiom for the same class i.e.
A is a B
A is a B that C's.

• AgentOntology
  • CivilOrganization
  • CommercialOrganization
• ArtifactOntology
  • ImagingInstrument
  • OpticalInstrument
  • PortionOfCoolant
  • WireReceiver
  • DishReceiver
  • PatchReceiver

Not sure about CCO policy/convention re this type of stuff. let me know if this is too much.

The definition of cco:has_process_part is:

For processes P1 and P2, P1 has process part P2 if and only if P2 occurs on a temporal interval that is during the temporal interval of P1 and P2 either provides an input to P1, recieves an output of p1 or both.

The last "p1" should be "P1".