{"id":1837,"date":"2007-11-14T09:28:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-14T09:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.leobard.net\/blog\/?p=1837"},"modified":"2017-11-04T15:47:37","modified_gmt":"2017-11-04T15:47:37","slug":"property-names-nouns-preferred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.leobard.net\/blog\/2007\/11\/14\/property-names-nouns-preferred\/","title":{"rendered":"Property names: nouns preferred"},"content":{"rendered":"

When constructing ontologies, labels are needed for properties. This is a crucial part of the work, the names will form the XML namespace and are visible as labels in the user interface.<\/b><\/p>\n

We had a discussion at work about names for predicates. To illustrate it, a bad example (in N3<\/a>):
\n:isKnowingperson a rdf:Property; rdfs:Range :Person.
\n<\/cite>
\nThe name is too long, contains a verb (“is”), has a mixed uppercasing (the “p” should be uppercase to ease reading) and contains too much information (Person can be removed, its also in the range. <\/p>\n

The practical community preferes nouns (part, location,
\ntopic, related) there is a slight one-sentence reco towards using nouns in the swap primer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The popular ontology (=foaf) use nouns for literal properties and a verb for knows. Similar relations can be modelled: loves, hates.
\nSKOS<\/a> [2], also uses isXOf for inverse that were hard to define, as is
\nrdfs:isDefinedBy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It seems that the trend is toward shorter forms, gerunds, verbs or nouns.
\nMy summary is: as I want to define inverses, I will try to use nouns
\nwithout verb-prepositions whenever possible. When this does not capture
\nthe semantics in a satisfying way, I will use “isXof” and “hasX” or
\nsearch for a gerund. In practice the guideline is: use “name” instead of
\n“hasName”.<\/p>\n

For NEPOMUK’s PIMO ontology, this would result in:<\/p>\n