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/*******************************************************************************
* Copyright (C) 2007, 2015:
*
* - Ferdinando Villa
* - integratedmodelling.org
* - any other authors listed in @author annotations
*
* All rights reserved. This file is part of the k.LAB software suite,
* meant to enable modular, collaborative, integrated
* development of interoperable data and model components. For
* details, see http://integratedmodelling.org.
*
* This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
* modify it under the terms of the Affero General Public License
* Version 3 or any later version.
*
* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
* but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of
* merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See the
* Affero General Public License for more details.
*
* You should have received a copy of the Affero General Public License
* along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
* Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
* The license is also available at: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html
*******************************************************************************/
package org.integratedmodelling.api.knowledge;
import java.util.Collection;
import org.integratedmodelling.exceptions.KlabException;
/**
* The interface for a Property. Most of the interface is meant to check the subtype of property we're dealing with.
* Some of the available subtypes are standard in OWL, others (such as classification) are IMA-specific and are
* normally figured out by checking whether the property inherits by specific upper ontology ones. Also, for now we
* just ignore functionality, simmetry, transitivity etc, given that the reasoner operates on the underlying OWL
* model. We'll see if they're needed.
*
* @author Ferdinando Villa, Ecoinformatics Collaboratory, UVM
*/
public interface IProperty extends IKnowledge {
/**
* The IMA provides ways around the fact that OWL-DL does not allow properties to have a class in their
* range, but only an instance. A property can be made a classification property by making it a subproperty
* of a generic "classification property" that is known to the KM. Instances of such properties will automatically
* look for (and create if necessary) a special unique instance of the class. The target of the relationship will
* appear as a class in the API.
* @return true if relationship is a classification relationship.
*/
public abstract boolean isClassification();
/**
* An equivalent of Datatype property in OWL, but extended to handle the extended literals (Reified literals)
* that the IMA supports. Such literals can be defined in OWL as instances of a class that derives from the
* configured ReifiedLiteral class in the base ontology, and they have a text property that links to the
* literal's definition. The API will create validated Values and not instances for these instances, using the
* validator configured for the type, and I/O to ontologies will handle them transparently.
* @return true if literal property: either DatatypeProperty or linking to a ReifiedLiteral
*/
public abstract boolean isLiteralProperty();
/**
* Check if this property links to an instance (object).
* @return true if property links to objects.
*/
public abstract boolean isObjectProperty();
/**
*
* @return true if annotation property
*/
public abstract boolean isAnnotation();
/**
* Returns the inverse of a IProperty. Null if there is no inverse.
* @return the inverse IProperty
*/
public IProperty getInverseProperty();
/**
*
* @return the range
*/
public abstract Collection getRange();
/**
* TODO domain may not be unique. It would be wonderful to ignore that for simplicity. I don't think
* multi-domain properties are good design.
* @return the domain
*/
public abstract Collection getPropertyDomain();
/**
* Return the (only) parent property, or throw an exception if there's more than one parent.
* @return the parent
* @throws KlabException
*/
public abstract IProperty getParent() throws KlabException;
/**
* @return all direct parents
*/
public abstract Collection getParents();
/**
* @return the parent closure
*/
public abstract Collection getAllParents();
/**
* @return the direct children
*/
public abstract Collection getChildren();
/**
* @return the children closure
*/
public abstract Collection getAllChildren();
/**
* @return true if functional
*/
public abstract boolean isFunctional();
}