Modeling Associations through Intensional Attributes

Attributes, a.k.a. slots or properties, are the main mechanism used to define associations between concepts or individuals modeling real world entities in a knowledge base. Traditionally, an attribute is defined by an explicit statement that specifies the name of the attribute and the entities it associates. This has three main limitations: (i) it is not easy to apply to large amounts of data, even if they share the same characteristics, since explicit definitions are needed for each concept or individual; (ii) it cannot handle future data, i.e., when new concepts or individuals are inserted in the knowledge base their attributes need to be explicitly defined; and (iii) it assumes that the data engineer, or the user that is introducing a new attribute, has access and privileges to modify the respective objects. The above may not be practical in many real ontology application scenarios. We are introducing a new form of attribute in which the domain and range are not specified explicitly...