Multiple domains/ranges for object property

Question

I am currently try to design an ontology but I am a new in this area. My ontology will have classes and object properties. No individual will be available.

I have an object property called Has . This property will have multiple domains and ranges. For example:

Student (Class Domain) Has (Object Property) Department (Class Range)

Mother (Class Domain) Has (Object Property) Child (Class Range)

Organisation (Class Domain) Has (Object Property) Department (Class Range)

I also expect more domains and ranges for the Has property to be added. I expect to have lot of object properties which will have multiple domains and ranges.

How to write Java code to store such information in an OWL file? Furthermore, I would like to know:

How to make a query to know how many domains and ranges a specific object property have and which domain matches which range?

How to write a code for finding does an object property has a specific triple? For example, Has (School, Department) . This triple means a School has a Department. If this triple is not available in the ontology, then I need to insert it into the ontology.

Answer 1

Declaring domains and ranges with OWL API is done by creating OWLObjectPropertyDomainAxiom and OWLObjectPropertyRangeAxiom objects.

However, from your description of the problem I do not think that multiple domains and ranges for the same property are the best modelling solution. It's probably a better choice to have multiple object properties with their own domain and range, using multiple ones only when required.

For examples see https://github.com/owlcs/owlapi/wiki/Documentation