Towards improving phenotype representation in OWL

Table 1 Summary of the main features of the discussed approaches.

Feature		EQ	RP	RC	RQ
A	role information	no	yes	yes	yes
B	unlimited arity of relations	no (yes)	yes	yes	yes
C	variable arity of relations	no	yes	yes	yes
D	straight-forward database support	yes	partially	partially	partially
E	max. nr. of relevant vocabulary	2/0	0/n + 1	2/n + 1	X + 1/n + 2
F	add. characterization of relations	no	no	no	yes

Abbreviations of the approaches: EQ: entity-quality, RP: roles-as-properties, RC: roles-as-classes, RQ: relator-based-quality. The entry of '(yes)' in line B, column EQ, reflects the discussed extensibility of EQ. The numbers in line E count vocabulary elements (OWL properties or classes) introduced in each approach. The first number is the number of fixed elements (applicable to all relational qualities), in case of EQ this is two for inheresIn and towards. The second number is the maximal number of elements required per n-ary relational quality, e.g. n OWL properties encoding n roles and 1 OWL class encoding the relation itself for RP. The variable X in column RQ stands for the respective number of the RP or RC columns, depending on the relation model that is combined with RQ.

ISSN: 2041-1480