[protege-discussion] The relationship between a class and its subclass or superclass.

[Thomas Russ]

On Jun 27, 2008, at 7:00 AM, Mariana Kessler Bortoluzzi wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I've created some ontologies and want to specify the relation between
> classes in the hierarchy. Some of my classes should relate to their
> superclasses by "part_of" relations while others should relate by an  
> "is_a"
> link. What is the best way to represent this in Protégé?
>
> I created slots linking superclass and subclass named "part_of" and  
> "is_a"
> to represent this, but is there any better representation?

You certainly need the "part_of" relationship, but for "is_a", you  
probably want to use the build-in sublclassing mechanism.  That gives  
you the proper is_a semantics already.

I think it would also be clearer if you didn't refer to classes linked  
by part_of as superclasses, since that seems to be the name reserved  
for the subclass/superclass relationship.