[protege-discussion] Query regarding relationship in Protege

[Timothy Redmond]

> I am a new user of Protege and I am using Protege 3.4.4 for generating 
> Ontologies for my project.
> I have generated my classes and properties but I stuck in generating 
> relationship. I like to assign a single property from more than one 
> (for example 15) classes to more than one classes (for example 20).
> Is it possible? I saw in Protege OWL that there is option for DOMAIN 
> and RANGE but how can I know that from one class it is generation more 
> than one (5 out of those 20 classes)?
> Could you please help me by replying my email.

I am not sure exactly what you are trying to do but the answer is quite 
probably that this will work.  A core question is what you mean exactly 
when you say that you would "like to assign a single property" to a 
class.  An obvious meaning is that "the property p is assigned to the 
class C" if for every individual in the class C there is at least one p 
property value for that individual.  This can be stated as

    C SubClassOf p some Thing
       


in Protege and with this definition p can be assigned to more than one 
class.

Another possibility is that you want to use "the property p is assigned 
to the class C" to mean that C is a domain for the property p.  You 
would need to be careful that you understand what this means though.  It 
means that for any property value

    <i, p, j>


that it necessarily follows that i is a member of C.  With this 
definition, if the property p is assigned to B and the property p is 
assigned to C then it would follow that for any property value

    <i, p, j>


that i was a member of both B and C.  This may not be what you want.  
Very likely you are actually aiming at the assertion that

    p domain (B or C)
       

(where "or" means union).

If  you express your problem in terms of what you are trying to say 
about the individuals of the various classes and how those individuals 
are mapped by properties then it would be easier to accurately answer 
your question.

-Timothy

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