Re: [ontolog-forum] Roles in the UBL Trading Cycle

[MDaconta@xxxxxxx]

Hi All,

In beginning to look at the UBL op70 library some classes
quickly become apparent for the basic business scenario of 
purchasing a product.

Invoice
Order
Product
Buyer 
Seller

Of course, Invoice and Order are artifacts of this purchase transaction.
Thus maybe they should be subclasses of Artifact (or possibly subclasses
of Document which is a subclass of Artifact ...).

The last two gave me pause because buyer and seller are actually
a role that an Organization or Individual takes on when being a party to
this transaction.  This brings me to the question: is it better to model
buyer and seller as a Role (or interface) than as a subclass of 
Person or Organization?  Of course, UML has a notion of Interface but
I do not believe protege nor RDFS supports the notion of an interface or 
role.

Which in turn leads us to the question of what are the semantics behind 
the notion of a Role in a data model (ontology) that does not touch upon 
behavior?

 - Mike
-------------------------------
Michael C. Daconta
Chief Scientist, Advanced Programs Group
McDonald Bradley, Inc.
www.daconta.net