Equivalent classes

The Concept Modeler can specify equivalence between two classes, import equivalent classes from OWL, and export equivalent classes to OWL. Class equivalence expresses a generalization relationship stereotyped as «Equivalent Class». The Concept Modeler will draw this with a double-headed arrow.

Two equivalent classes in Concept Modeler.

From the figure above, the equivalence class arrow defines that the two classes are semantically equivalent to each other. For more information on how to create equivalent classes, see Create Equivalent Classes.

If you would like to look at equivalent class relations which are identified by «Equivalent Class» stereotype, there are several possibilities of results depending on the types of classes. Consider the two related classes called Class 1 and Class 2. After perusing through all of these cases, please refer to the figure below the text to see a brief summary of some of these cases.

• If both classes are Class but they do not share the same name, then one class will show “Equivalent to” and the rest will show “See.”
• If both classes are Class and they do share the same name, then it will appear as one class with all the properties from both classes.
• If Class is equivalent to a Union, then the Class will be shown with its properties and the subclasses of Union will be shown under Class.
• If both classes are Unions then both unions will be merged and follow the same pattern as the Class/Union combinations explained above.

The following information explains more explicitly how to determine which Class will show “Equivalent to” and which will show “See.”

• If only one class has documentation:
  • This class will show ‘Equivalent to’ and list the rest of the classes it is equivalent to.
  • The rest of the classes will show ‘See’ with the link going back to the class that shows ‘Equivalent to’
• More than one class has documentation:
  • First class with documentation in alphabetical order will show ‘Equivalent to’ and list rest of the classes it is equivalent to
  • The rest of the classes will show ‘See’ with the link going back to the class that shows ‘Equivalent to’
• None of the classes have documentation
  • First class in alphabetical order will show ‘Equivalent to’ and list rest of the classes it is equivalent to
  • The rest of the classes will show ‘See’ with the link going back to the class that shows ‘Equivalent to’

Segmented shots of a report showing the merging of all the equivalent classes in the project.

Related page

• Concept Modeling Semantics