Adding a subclass to Agent named Group and a property hasMember

Introduction

The proposed change request involves introducing a new subclass named Group under the Agent class and adding a property called hasMember. This change aims to enhance the model's ability to represent complex relationships between agents and their members.

Current Model

In the current semantic data model, the Agent class is a high-level concept that represents legal subjects capable of performing actions. It may include individuals or groups of individuals.

Proposed Change

1. Subclass: Group

   • Definition: A Group is a type of Agent that consists of multiple members, which can also be agents.

2. Property: hasMember

   • Definition: The hasMember property relates a Group to the Agents that are its members.
   • Rationale: This property facilitates the expression of membership relationships between a group and its constituent agents, enabling the model to capture the structure and composition of groups.

Impact and Benefits

• Enhanced Representation: The addition of the Group subclass and the hasMember property enhances the model's expressive power, allowing for more nuanced and detailed descriptions of social structures, organizational hierarchies, and collaborative relationships.
• Improved Querying and Reasoning: With these changes, queries can be more specific, such as asking for all members of a particular group or identifying groups to which a specific agent belongs. This can lead to more accurate and relevant results in applications utilizing the semantic data model.
• Known pattern: this ontological pattern is used in well known in widely adopted ontologies, such as FOAF.