Unclear distinction between hasPart and hasMember
-
Key: COMMONS13-36
-
Status: open
-
Source: Adaptive ( Mr. Pete Rivett)
-
Summary:
The definitions in Collections are terse or drawn from diverse sources, and the notes focus on technical aspects (such as transitivity) that don't help a modeler decide which to use.
hasMember definition is overly terse, whereas hasPart is almost absurdly long and littered with disjunctions making it all-inclusive of anything.in FIBO for example hasPart is used to link from a PooledFund to its FundUnits, and a BondPool to its Bonds. And from a Judiciary to its Courts.
But on the other hand hasMember is used to link a Program to its Projects and an InstrumentPool to its FinancialIstruments.Clearly there is some understanding of the distinction being deployed in FIBO, especially related to Pools, that is not clear in the Commons definitions. Especially because BondPool subclasses DebtPool which subclasses InstrumentPool which has a hasMember restriction, yet hasPart is used.
Also it's unclear why hasPart has no relation to comprises.
Generally I think there's too much in authors' heads and not enough written - which is essential for successful and consistent usage in ontologies, data and queries.Definitions follow:
hasMember: includes, as a discrete element. Note that the domain of hasMember should be some sort of collection, aggregate, or group. In the Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO), hasMember is used in the case of parties (people and organizations), whereas comprises can have anything in its range.hasPart: indicates any portion of something, regardless of whether the portion itself is attached to the remainder or detached; cognitively salient or arbitrarily demarcated; self-connected or disconnected; homogeneous or gerrymandered; material or immaterial; extended or unextended; spatial or temporal
-
Reported: Commons 1.2b1 — Tue, 8 Jul 2025 19:03 GMT
-
Updated: Tue, 8 Jul 2025 19:03 GMT