Master in Informatics and Computing Engineering
Information Description, Storage and Retrieval
Instance: 2020/2021
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This is a set of recommendations concerning the topics, available materials and references for mini-test #2. ¶

The mini-test is on Semantic Web and Ontologies. A detailed account of topics and available materials is on the corresponding lecture pages. ¶

Some topics for which there will be questions: ¶

• Developing a set of classes for the concepts of a proposed domain; ¶
• Developing a set of properties to characterize the objects of a proposed domain; ¶
• Adding restrictions to classes and features to the properties of an ontology; ¶
• Applying and re-using ontologies; ¶
• Querying ontologies with SPARQL; ¶
• Analysing the practical work: goals, results. ¶

Our main reference is the documentation of the “Semantic Web Activity” on the W3C site, and the topics are also covered in the book “The Semantic Web Primer” by Grigoris Antoniou and Frank van Harmelen. ¶

The following documents are provided in Moodle for reference: ¶

1. Tim Berners-Lee, Linked Data, online at http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html ¶
2. Guus Schreiber, Yves Raimond, RDF 1.1 Primer, W3C Working Group Note 24 June 2014, online at http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-primer/ ¶
3. W3C, SPARQL 1.1 Query Language, W3C Recommendation 21 March 2013, online at https://www.w3.org/TR/sparql11-query/ ¶
4. W3C, RDF Schema 1.1, W3C Recommendation 25 February 2014, online at http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/ ¶
5. W3C, OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Primer (Second Edition), W3C Recommendation 11 December 2012, online at http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-primer/ ¶
6. Matthew Horridge, A Practical Guide To Building OWL Ontologies Using Protégé 4 and CO-ODE Tools“, Edition 1.3, 2011, online at http://owl.cs.manchester.ac.uk/publications/talks-and-tutorials/protg-owl-tutorial/ ¶

The mini-test has an estimated duration of 90 minutes, some reference materials are available and the Protégé 5.x tool is used to develop an ontology in OWL. ¶

The mini-test will be answered in Moodle and has around a dozen multiple-choice questions, open questions, plus some questions that involve uploading (ONLY ONCE) a OWL file. ¶

An ontology is a representation of knowledge that favours the interoperability of knowledge from several sources. It can integrate information from various sources, making it easy to use information in different contexts and to make inference based on general information about the domain. ¶

In the following example, the selected domain is a condominium. An ontology in this area can be used by a company providing services to manage the information about the condominiums they are looking after. ¶

For the “Condominium” ontology, important domain concepts are illustrated in the following figure: buildings of various kinds (apartments, houses, offices and warehouses), companies, payments, people (condominium administrators and building owners) and places. ¶

[figure…] ¶

To load this ontology in Protégé, use the attached OWL file. ¶

For the “Condominium” ontology create additional classes and their hierarchy to represent the following concepts: […] ¶

In the class hierarchy add all the restrictions that make sense, for example to represent disjoint classes. ¶

Add some individuals to represent […] ¶

For the “Condominium” ontology create additional properties and their hierarchy to represent the relationships: […] ¶

Enter the appropriate properties and use them to record the following information: […] ¶

In the property hierarchy add the inverse properties and the characteristics of properties (e.g. functional, symmetric, reflexive, asymmetric). ¶

Define an additional class to represent […] ¶

Multiple choice questions about the main concepts of this Semantic Web module. ¶

A couple of open questions on the use of ontologies in applications, the processes for populating an ontology, ontology merging. ¶

– JCL + MCR + SSN ¶