Manchester OWL Syntax

TopBraid Composer uses the Manchester OWL Syntax for displaying and editing OWL class expressions. The Manchester OWL Syntax has been influenced by both the OWL Abstract Syntax and the DL style syntax, which uses description logic symbols such as the universal quantifier (upside-down A) or the existential quantifier (upside-down E).

The sections below describe the most frequently used elements of the Manchester OWL Syntax used in TopBraid Composer.

Restrictions

OWL	DL Symbol	TopBraid Composer Syntax Keyword	Example
someValuesFrom		some	hasChild some Man
allValuesFrom		only	hasSibling only Woman
hasValue		value	hasCountryOfOrigin value England
minCardinality		min	hasChild min 3
cardinality		exactly	hasChild exactly 3
maxCardinality		max	hasChild max 3

Note that OWL allows hasValue restrictions to have a datatype literal as filler. Examples for the syntax for these in TopBraid Composer is as follows:

• "value" for xsd:string literals
• 42 for xsd:int literals
• 4.2 for xsd:float literals
• true or false for xsd:boolean literals

Boolean Class Constructors

OWL	DL Symbol	TopBraid Composer Syntax Keyword	Example
intersectionOf		and	Doctor and Female
unionOf		or	Man or Woman
complementOf		not	not Child

Enumerated classes

Enumerated classes using the owl:oneOf operator can be entered by a list of comma-separated values between curly brackets. For example,

{Cairns, Sydney, Canberra}

defines the class consisting of only the three individual cities.

Complex Class Expressions

Complex class expressions can be constructed using the above boolean constructors and restrictions. For example,

Person and hasChild some (Person and (hasChild only Man) and (hasChild some Person))

describes the set of people who have at least one child that has some children that are only men (i.e., grandparents that only have grandsons). Note that brackets should be used to disambiguate the meaning of the expression.