I need to personalize the individuals of an ontology

Question

Well, I have an ontology and I want to add some individuals. The problem is that individuals vary from one user to another. Let me give you an example:

In the class "pet" I want to add my dog "cookie", I can do it directly on the ontology but when somebody else uses the same ontology it would be filled with my information. Do you know any way to add new individuals to the ontology without modifying the original?

I'ts some kind of personalization. I don't know how to search for work related to this problem, if you know something I would appreciate it. Thank you!

Answer 1

Note: this is the answer I posted for (and that was accepted for) the same question on answers.semanticweb.com, Add new individuals to an ontology.

You would typically create a new ontology that imports the original (so that you have declarations of the classes, properties, etc.), and then declare your individual in the new ontology. For instance,

pet-import (http://example.org/pet-import)

@prefix :      <http://example.org/pet-import#> .
@prefix owl:   <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .

:Pet    a       owl:Class .

<http://example.org/pet-import>
        a       owl:Ontology .

my-pets (http://example.org/my-pets)

@prefix :      <http://example.org/my-pets#> .
@prefix owl:   <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .

<http://example.org/my-pets>
        a            owl:Ontology ;
        owl:imports  <http://example.org/pet-import> .

:Cookie  a      owl:NamedIndividual , <http://example.org/pet-import#Pet> .