An owl:priorVersion
statement, that is an instance of
owl:OntologyProperty, contains a reference to another ontology. This identifies the
specified ontology as a prior version of the containing ontology. This has no
meaning in the model-theoretic semantics other than that given by the RDF(S)
model theory. However, it may be used by software to organize ontologies by
versions.
owl:priorVersion is a built-in OWL property with the class
owl:Ontology as its domain and range.
<rdf:Property rdf:ID="priorVersion">
<rdfs:label>priorVersion</rdfs:label>
<rdf:type rdf:resource="#OntologyProperty"/>
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Ontology"/>
<rdfs:range rdf:resource="#Ontology"/>
</rdf:Property>
If a property o is used where an ontology property is expected
then it should either be one of the built in ontology properties
(owl:imports, owl:priorVersion,
owl:backwardCompatibleWith, and owl:incompatibleWith)
or there should be a triple:
o rdf:type owl:OntologyProperty
<owl:Ontology rdf:about="">
<rdfs:comment>Vehicle Ontology, v. 1.1</rdfs:comment>
<owl:backwardCompatibleWith rdf:resource="http://www.example.org/vehicle-1.0"/>
<owl:priorVersion rdf:resource="http://www.example.org/vehicle-1.0"/>
</owl:Ontology>
The ontology-import construct owl:imports and the
ontology-versioning constructs owl:priorVersion,
owl:backwardCompatibleWith and owl:incompatibleWith are defined in the OWL
vocabulary as instances of the OWL built-in class owl:OntologyProperty. Instances of
owl:OntologyProperty must have the class owl:Ontology
as their domain and range.