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Ontology concepts

Short glossary for engineers new to OWL/RDF who are evaluating OntoCode.

Core terms

Term Meaning
IRI Internationalized Resource Identifier — the canonical ID for a class, property, or individual (e.g. http://example.org/people#Person)
Turtle (.ttl) Human-readable RDF syntax; the only format OntoCode can write back today
Class A category or type (e.g. Person, Organization)
Object property A relationship between individuals (e.g. hasParent)
Data property A relationship from an individual to a literal value (e.g. hasAge)
Individual A named instance of one or more classes
Axiom A logical statement, such as SubClassOf or EquivalentClasses
Annotation Descriptive metadata (labels, comments) that does not affect reasoning

Manchester syntax

A text notation for OWL class expressions (e.g. ex:hasRecord some ex:MedicalRecord). OntoCode v0.8 supports subclass, equivalent, and disjoint axioms via the Manchester editor — see Manchester guide.

Reasoning profiles

Profile Typical use
EL OWL EL ontologies (default in OntoCode v0.8)
RL OWL RL materialization
RDFS RDFS entailment
DL Full OWL 2 DL — requires OntoLogos 1.0 (not shipped in v0.8)

Asserted vs inferred hierarchy

  • Asserted — parent/child edges written explicitly in your .ttl files
  • Inferred — additional subsumption edges computed by the reasoner
  • Combined — asserted plus inferred edges in the explorer tree

Run OntoCode: Run Reasoner before switching to inferred or combined mode.

OntoCode vs OntoIndex

  • OntoCode — VS Code extension (UI)
  • OntoIndex — Rust engine (CLI, LSP, crates)

Next steps