An organization ontology that covers formal organizations, legal entities, and organization membership is essential for the ongoing retail ontology effort, for development of an ontology for the emerging PPMN standard, and others.

Note that representation of domicile requires the concept of a geopolitical entity, which the task force agrees belongs in a more general locations ontology. Thus, a locations ontology is also needed as part of a resolution for this issue.

Add new locations and organizations ontologies to the Commons library

The resolution to this issue affects both the specification document and machine readable files. It adds one property to the designators ontology and incorporates two additional ontologies, one describing locations, which is needed for several processes: the Retail Industry Ontology, the RoSO ontology for robotics, a planned revision to the Multiple Vocabulary Facility (MVF), and a planned update to LCC, as well as external efforts, and an organizations ontology, also needed for the RIO ontology and external work.

1. County and FederalCapitalArea should be subclasses of CountrySubdivision

2. FederalState should have synonyms rather than this in the note "variously referred to as a state, province or canton".

3. Several annotations on geographic region identifier and a few other concepts need clarification

Cleaned up a few issues identified in the locations ontology during review

These include adjusting the class hierarchy for consistent representation of country subdivisions as well as minor adjustments to definitions

Rather than classifying 'something' an aspect should classify a set or group of things - at a higher metalevel than 'quality' in BFO, for example. This impacts the Classifiers ontology, in which Aspect is defined.

Clarified the definition of the Aspect class

Revised metadata to be current and revised the definition from

'characteristic or feature that can be used to dimensionalize, filter, or subset something'

to

'characteristic or feature that can be used to dimensionalize, filter, or a class, collection, or set of things'

Requirements range from retail to finance and health care, where certain constructs, such as identifiers, are registered with specific authorities, and understanding who has registered a particular identifier is essential to the definition of that identifier.

Coverage should include definitions for registration authority, registrar (which could be a person or organization, and may or may not be part of the same organization as the authority), a registered identifier, which should be modeled as a contextual identifier, the registry and some registration scheme.

Note that the resolution to this issue depends on Commons-1.2-8, including properties in the organizations ontology.

Add a new ontology covering registration authorities to the Commons library

Requirements range from retail to finance, government, pharmaceuticals, and health care, where certain constructs, such as identifiers, are registered with specific authorities, and understanding who has registered a particular identifier is essential to the definition of that identifier.

The OMG's FIGI standard, for example, allows for a single registration authority (RA), which is Bloomberg LP, but enables multiple registrars to act on behalf of the RA. Today registrars include Bloomberg LP as well as Kaiko.

Coverage should include definitions for registration authority, registrar (which could be a person or organization, and may or may not be part of the same organization as the authority), a registered identifier, which should be modeled as a contextual identifier, the registry and some registration scheme.

Note that the resolution to this issue depends on the resolutions in Ballot #3, Commons-1.2-8, including properties in the organizations ontology.

One example of this is hasNumericValue. It is currently declared to be functional, but could be the parent property for several properties of some class. In this case, the resulting ontology could be logically inconsistent if the values are not the same (and even if they are, by coincidence, that's still a problem). Other properties that are also declared as functional should be reviewed for the same issue.

Revised the quantities and units ontology to remove unnecessary constraints

1. Revised the quantities and units ontology to remove functional declarations on a number of properties. These constraints caused reasoning errors when any of the properties, such as hasNumericValue, were used as the superproperty of more than one subproperty on the same class (concept).
2. Eliminated circular restrictions on system of quantities, system of units and added links back to the appropriate system from the quantity or unit
3. Revised the license to include the copyrights and full text, added Airbus, Ontogenesis Solutions

This would assist in alignment with SysML v2, but more importantly allows alignment of some quantity value with a more general measurement reference rather than only a measurement unit, for representation of IU in pharma, for example.

Add measurement reference to the quantities and units ontology

The resolution to this issue involves:
1. Adding a new measurement reference class, which is a subclass of the union of measurement procedure, measurement unit, and reference material, though not equivalent because there may be other related concepts
2. Adding / replacing the superclass for measurement procedure, measurement unit, and reference material with measurement reference as appropriate,
3. Adding measurement reference as the parent for measurement scale, corresponding with SysML v2, and
4. Adding a new property, has measurement reference, and making has measurement unit a subproperty of has measurement reference

Note that the metadata required for this revision has been applied to the resolution for Commons12-5 and thus the resolution to this issue depends on the resolution to Commons12-5.

This is needed for representation of tensor and vector quantities for the quantities and units ontology, and for representation of certain machine learning algorithms, among other requirements.

Significant research is required to complete this ontology and related work on tensor and vector quantities

The work to complete this resolution requires testing with the SysML v2 library of quantities and units, and may ultimately result in additional changes to the approach taken to represent quantities in general. This has been a significant effort to date, including a number of contributors who created the corresponding artifacts for SysML v2. We believe more care needs to be taken to test any resulting ontology and reference library, which is planned over the coming months.

Because some of the other work on the Commons 1.2 specification was more urgently needed, we elected to defer this until the Commons 1.3 RTF.

There is a gap in the quantities and units ontology whereby we cannot represent counts of things, which do not necessarily have units, nor can we properly represent ratio values, which may involve scalar quantity values that do not have units. There is also a challenge in representing ratio values more generally, since there is no numeric value representing the ratio on the class.

The issue of unitless measures should be addressed in the context of the work we are doing with tensors and vectors

There is ongoing good work on an ontology for tensors and vectors, with planned revisions for tensor and vector quantities planned for the Commons 1.3 RTF due to the amount of work involved. This issue should be resolved in conjunction with that one in case there are relevant related revisions.

These include tax authorities for retail applications, banking regulators in finance, other regulators for manufacturing and engineering applications. A small ontology that supports the definition of regulatory authorities, including their jurisdiction, would be quite useful for these kinds of applications and is needed for the emerging retail industry ontology.

Augment the Commons library with an ontology for regulatory agencies to support retail, manufacturing, and other applications

The primary use cases for regulatory agencies in retail are for tax authorities, but for retail pharmaceuticals, there is also a requirement to be able to represent medicines regulatory agencies and related governmental stakeholder, for example. A small ontology that supports the definition of regulatory authorities, including their jurisdiction, would be quite useful for these kinds of applications and is needed for the emerging retail industry ontology.

Note that the resolution to this issue depends on the resolutions in Ballot #3, Commons-1.2-8, including properties in the organizations ontology.

Definitions of certain kinds of structured collections, including sets, lists, and some ordered collections are not well defined in OWL. A small ontology that includes definitions for these elements is needed for retail and other OMG work in progress.

Augment the Commons library with a small ontology for structured collections

Definitions of certain kinds of structured collections, including sets, lists, and some ordered collections are not well defined in OWL. Examples of ordered collections include chronologically ordered collections and indexed collections. A small ontology that includes definitions for these elements is needed for retail and other OMG work in progress.

Note that the resolution to this issue depends on the resolutions in Ballot #3, Commons-1.2-8, including properties in the organizations ontology.

The definition in Commons Annotation Vocabulary is not a mere copy of what's in DCT with the documented addition of making it a owl:AnnotationProperty, but adds the triple :
<rdfs:subPropertyOf rdf:resource="&skos;note"/>
That may or may not be a good idea but it adds a dependency and it's a significant change that should be flagged.
In fact, given that SKOS itself makes use of DCT, that makes for a somewhat undesirable circular dependency though not formally stated.

If an aim is some sort of unification then maybe skos:definition should be made a subProperty of dct:description.

Little best practice or guidance is given in either the spec or the ontology. By the fact that they're included it seems that skos:prefLabel and skos:altLabel are recommended. However they're not actually used in this or any of the other Commons ontologies.
Commons itself provides an alternative with its Designations ontology. And OMG provides a strong capability in MVF.

Users of Commons should be warned about the anti-pattern use of rdfs:label as the primary in conjunction with skos:altLabel which makes it impossible, with reasoning enabled, to return only the primary (since skos:altLabel; is a subProperty of rdfs:label)

The definitions taken from SKOS seem altered and incomplete.
For example here is the official definition from SKOS RDF file for altLabel. The Commons version changes the label (using "tag" instead of "label") and omits the comments, one of which is the important (informal) disjointness constraint, and example.

<rdf:Description rdf:about="#altLabel">
<rdfs:label xml:lang="en">alternative label</rdfs:label>
<rdfs:isDefinedBy rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core"/>
<skos:definition xml:lang="en">An alternative lexical label for a resource.</skos:definition>
<skos:example xml:lang="en">Acronyms, abbreviations, spelling variants, and irregular plural/singular forms may be included among the alternative labels for a concept. Mis-spelled terms are normally included as hidden labels (see skos:hiddenLabel).</skos:example>
<!-- S10 -->
<rdf:type rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#AnnotationProperty"/>
<!-- S11 -->
<rdfs:subPropertyOf rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#label"/>
<!-- S12 (not formally stated) -->
<rdfs:comment xml:lang="en">The range of skos:altLabel is the class of RDF plain literals.</rdfs:comment>
<!-- S13 (not formally stated) -->
<rdfs:comment xml:lang="en">skos:prefLabel, skos:altLabel and skos:hiddenLabel are pairwise disjoint properties.</rdfs:comment>
<!-- For non-OWL aware applications -->
<rdf:type rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#Property"/>
</rdf:Description>

SBRM and other OMG processes need to be able to connect documents to the components therein. RTF members have requested that we add these terms to the documents ontology to facilitate mapping to other document ontologies as well as for extension purposes.

Several OMG members have requested a general ontology that includes sites and facilities, which are currently modeled in FIBO, primarily for lending and asset management purposes, but they are also needed for retail and manufacturing. The relationship between a site and a facility is many to many, and modeling them for manufacturing as well as retail, energy, military, and other domain areas can be tricky. Having the general pattern that can be extended by any domain area would be very useful for extension purposes.

There is a gap in the quantities and units ontology whereby we cannot represent counts of things, which do not necessarily have units, nor can we properly represent ratio values, which may involve scalar quantity values that do not have units. There is also a challenge in representing ratio values more generally, since there is no numeric value representing the ratio on the class.

This is needed for representation of tensor and vector quantities for the quantities and units ontology, and for representation of certain machine learning algorithms, among other requirements.

After additional review, RTF members suggested that a better name for the ontology would be roles and compositions. Other feedback identified a typo, suggested that we add the notion of independent identity in the definition of composition for clarification, and remove the functional axiom on the property isPlayedBy, which might overly constrain its utility.

Rename the new composites ontology and revise definitions per additional RTF discussion

The resolution to this issue depends on the resolution to COMMONS-11-4, adding a new Composites ontology, and revises the results of that resolution, including renaming and moving the sections in the specification as well as renaming the ontology, per further RTF discussion.

Note that the change barred version of the document does not reflect the original sections (i.e., adding and then deleting 8.5, for ease of managing the resulting document in LibreOffice.

In pharmaceuticals and other industries, products are often composed of other things. The 'recipe' for manufacturing a product includes various ingredients, which are roles that substances, components. or other things take on in the context of that product.

Further, there are cases where the composition of some product is context specific. Product documentation may be jurisdictionally defined due to regulatory constraints, for example. The representation of some ingredients in certain pharmaceutical products, including the way these elements are described on packaging, is jurisdiction specific, even thought the product itself has exactly the same composition via exactly the same manufacturing processes world wide.

A general pattern for this kind of composition would be quite useful for a number of domain areas and is a good candidate for inclusions in the Commons library.

Augment the Commons library with an ontology defining compositions and roles

Introduce a new ontology representing composition and role as classes and relationships between them for use in addressing the requirements outlined in the issue description

Currently we have an explicit date period, but not explicit time period, which is needed for PPMN, among other processes. This is also required for Robotics.

Added a number of properties to the Dates and Times ontology related to start and end time

The resolution to this issue adds two classes to the ontology: TimePeriod and ExplicitTimePeriod, and a number of properties, including a general purpose hasTime property as well as hasDateOfIssuance, hasEnd, hasEndTime, hasStart, hasStartTime, and hasTimePeriod, per request of two task forces, Robotics Service Ontology (RoSO) and Pedigree and Provenance Metamodel and Notation (PPMN).

Note: in the text revisions, under item 5, there are no sections labeled i and n because solitaire turned them into odd emojis.

A preliminary quantities and units ontology was developed for FIBO for use with commodities. Several other groups at OMG need this ontology, as do external users of the Commons library. The ontology should be mappable to the SysML v2 library so that we can generate the individuals in that library for use in knowledge graph applications. It should also be consistent, to the degree possible, with the latest changes to the VIM, with BIPM requirements, and with ISO 11240 for use in the pharmaceutical domain.

There is a dependency in the quantities and units ontology on a small documents ontology, to provide the reference documentation for certain units. This ontology is relatively small, however, and can easily be mapped to other ontologies defining documents.

Introduce two new ontologies, a documents ontology and a quantities and units ontology that depends on it

Several OMG task forces and other external industry groups in pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, finance and others, there is a widely recognized need for a well-designed ontology supporting quantities and units. While a number of ontologies exist that claim to fill this gap, few are well designed and some have moved away from OWL in order to meet other demands. Within OMG, the healthcare, finance, robotics, and retail task forces all have requirements for a quantities and units ontology. Given the latest advances in SysML, such an ontology should align well with the library of quantities and units in SysML v2 so that the equivalent reference content in RDF/OWL can be automatically generated.

The ontologies included in this resolution fill that need, although they are limited to scalar quantities at this juncture. The RTF intends to create a new arrays / vectors / tensors ontology and a companion quantities and units extension to support tensor and vector quantities over the coming months. Most applications do not need that level of sophistication however, and thus the RTF has determined that submission of the scalar version should happen sooner than later to fulfill requirements of other task forces.

A situation is a complex, typically time-bound, setting, state of being, or relationship that is relatively stable for some period of time. An ontology defining such situations, including the complex property chains that link the actors and undergoers in such situations to the roles that they play is essential in finance, pharma, retail, robotics, and many other industries.

A well-tested ontology that describes these patterns would be a useful addition to the Commons library. In addition, this ontology (and the new composition ontology on which it depends) is urgently needed for the Robotics Service Ontology (RoSO), whose planned revised submission is planned for September 2023.

Note that the resolution of this issue requires the ontology added under COMMONS-11-4.

Augment the Commons library with an ontology defining parties and situations

The parties and situations ontology defines concepts including agent and agent role, party and party role, situation - which is a state of affairs / reified relationship that holds for some period of time, and other related roles and relations that are commonly required across many domains.

Note that the resolution to this issue depends on resolutions to COMMONS-11-1, COMMONS-11-3, and COMMONS-11-8 have been applied first, and that sections have been renumbered and organized alphabetically by ontology name prior to applying this resolution.

This is needed for representation of tensor and vector quantities for the quantities and units ontology, and for representation of certain machine learning algorithms, among other requirements.

Development of an ontology for Arrays, Tensors and Vectors

This issue will take more time and thoughtful effort to resolve, and the task force agreed to defer it as well as this aspect of quantities and units to the next revision.The new quantities and units ontology supports scalar quantities, which is what most users, including robotics, retail, and finance, need. The tensor and vector aspects are primarily used in specific disciplines of engineering.