Why specialized OIMs?

In order to design his/her Document Types, the user will use templates from the applicable OIMs, or define specializations of such templates and use those. This specialization is done by:

specializing property objects, using owl:Restriction, owl:onProperty, and owl:allValuesFrom;
"fixing" the value of property objects to an end value, using owl:Restriction, owl:onProperty, and owl:hasValue.

NOTE - The ID of the fixed property object is of an object that is considered as an "individual" in the OWL sense. This means that it may not be used for typing anything else. If this is violated, OWL is pushed out of OWL-DL. This "individual" in the OWL sense may very well (and often is) be an instance of a part2:class (e.g. BAR GAUGE is an instance of Scale, and hence a part2:class). This may only give problems when we analyze data sets that are both in the Shorthand Template domain as well as in the Longhand Template domain.

Note that in fact we do not have a specialized OIM (there is no OIM class, only an ontology), but a specialized template that is a further specialization of some template in some OIM.

The following code snippets illustrate this.

In the OIM for an ElectricMotor we find the specialized template:

<part2:ClassOfMultidimensionalObject rdf:ID="ST-ELECTRIC_MOTOR-3401-026">

<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="http://tpl.rdlfacade.org/data#ST-3401"/>

<rdfs:label xml:lang="en">Electric Motor breakdown torque</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Restriction>

<owl:onProperty rdf:resource="http://tpl.rdlfacade.org/data#possessor"/>

<owl:allValuesFrom rdf:resource="http://rdl.rdlfacade.org/data#RDS415124"/>

</owl:Restriction>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Restriction>

<owl:onProperty rdf:resource="http://tpl.rdlfacade.org/data#propertyType"/>

<owl:hasValue rdf:resource="http://rdl.rdlfacade.org/data#RDS6652260"/>

</owl:Restriction>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

</part2:ClassOfMultidimensionalObject>

In the specialized OIM ontology of the XYZ Corporation we may find a further specialization of that template, in that the unitOfMeasure Property gets a fixed value of NewtonMetre:

<part2:ClassOfMultidimensionalObject rdf:ID="ST-ELECTRIC_MOTOR-3401-026">

<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="http://www.15926.org/oim#ST-ELECTRIC_MOTOR-3401-026"/>

<rdfs:label xml:lang="en">Electric Motor breakdown torque in NewtonMetre</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Restriction>

<owl:onProperty rdf:resource="http://tpl.rdlfacade.org/data#unitOfMeasure"/>

<owl:hasValue rdf:resource="http://rdl.rdlfacade.org/data#RDS1337984"/>

</owl:Restriction>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

</part2:ClassOfMultidimensionalObject>

The XYZ Corporation might as well have chosen another name. It still is different from the name in the OIM ontology, because it has a differrent URI. The Restrictions defined in the OIM ontology are inherited, thus have not to be repeated.

The XYZ Corporation now can refer to this specialized template in his specialized OIM when designing one of his Document Types. In order to verify that he still is complying with the standard the software can validate whether or not the referred superclass template http://oim.rdlfacade.org/data#ST-ELECTRIC_MOTOR-3401-026 in the OIM is linked to the class (here: ElectricMotor) he has in mind (see also here).

Another reason for designing a specialization of an ISO-standard OIM is when the user organization wants something in that the ISO domain experts have not (yet) approved. The risk is though that if it remains disapproved the resulting data exchange will cause troubles.