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Problem: I need to create an ontology (say www.example.com/ontology/ont# , with ONT prefix). This ontology consists of some other ontologies with prefixes as SSN, TIME, GEO, etc. Now, the confusion is that when I use ONT ontology for data modelling, should I use original prefix’s such as SSN,TIME and GEO or should I go with ONT prefix.

Conclusion: During data modelling, If I go with ONT namespace then I think l have to alter the prefixes of previous ontologies by using owl:sameAs, owl:equivalentClass, owl:subclass concepts. And, on using original prefixes during data modelling, care has to be taken as each modelled data item should be dereferenceable. Am I right with this conclusion? Is there any third approach to model the data when your ontology consists of several other ontologies?

I am not able to decide which approach should I use. What are pros of one over the other? Is there any tutorial or any reference which discusses this issue?

Haroon Lone
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  • *During data modelling, If I go with ONT namespace then I think l have to alter the prefixes of previous ontologies"* Why? *Is there any third approach to model the data when your ontology consists of several other ontologies?* owl:imports exists for exactly that reason. Just import those ontologies in your own. – Joshua Taylor May 27 '15 at 15:51
  • @Joshua Taylor, I don't mean that I have to change their prefixes completely, but on using ONT namespace I have to map ONT prefixes to prefixes of existing/ previous ontologies. With respect to data modelling I mean associating my data to ONT prefixes or prefixes of existing ontologies. – Haroon Lone May 28 '15 at 02:05
  • It's not really clear what you mean. Things in OWL ontologies (classes, properties, classes, etc.) are identified by URIs. Prefixes are just a convenience for writing things by hand. And you can use multiple prefixes to abbreviate the same URI, so it's fine if you use "ex:" to stand for `http://example.com/` and an ontology that you import uses "example:" to stand for the same thing. "ex:abc" and "example:abc" will mean the same thing. But even there, when you import an ontology, you don't import the prefixes from some file; those are just used to make things more readable; the actual – Joshua Taylor May 28 '15 at 12:03
  • data is just based on the URIs. – Joshua Taylor May 28 '15 at 12:03

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If i understand your question correctly, you're essentially asking if you should "duplicate" existing classes and properties from other ontologies into your own one.

The clear answer is: no.

The semantic web / linked data lives of the re-use of existing vocabularies, so [...] it's best to not re-invent any new schema, but just to use parts from existing ones. Your data will then even be useful without any reasoning.

See this answer for more.

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Jörn Hees
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  • This means that I should not unnecessarily create new duplicate classes ( i.e., I don't need to map my classes to classes in the previous ontologies). Also, I should annotate my data according to prefixes found in the previous ontologies. Therefore, I have to use the prefixes of existing ontologies during data modelling. My ontology (ONT) will only represent the integration of existing ontologies and its namespace will not be used for data modelling. – Haroon Lone May 28 '15 at 03:20