| name | aaki-define |
| description | Use when creating or extending an OSLC domain — authoring an open RDF vocabulary, OSLC ResourceShapes that constrain it for a specific API contract, and the matching vocab.html and shapes.html documentation. Covers OSLC's open-vocabulary + constraining-shapes model, naming discipline, link ownership, inverse metadata, and how to align with the OSLC-OP specs (https://github.com/oslc-op/oslc-specs). |
AAKI — Define stage: authoring an OSLC domain
Stage 1 of AI Assisted Knowledge Integration — a four-stage framework (Define, Instantiate, Activate, Govern). The pattern here applies to any OSLC domain (engineering, regulation, operations, business motivation, custom). Produce four artifacts so an oslc4js-style server can be scaffolded over them with no domain-specific application code:
<Domain>.ttl — the open vocabulary: one rdf:Class per type and one rdf:Property per attribute or forward link. Plain identifiers with rdfs:label and rdfs:comment only.<Domain>-Shapes.ttl — one oslc:ResourceShape per instantiable class, declaring how the open vocabulary is used and constrained in this server's REST API. This is where typing, cardinality, value spaces, and ranges live.<Domain>-vocab.html — human-browsable rendering of the vocabulary.<Domain>-Shapes.html — human-browsable rendering of the shapes (matches the structure of the published OSLC-OP specs).
The skill is self-contained — it does not require reading any external prompt file. The "Authoring approach" section below provides a generic, reusable prompt template you can adapt to any domain.
Foundational principle: open vocabularies + constraining shapes
OSLC's "ontology" is deliberately simpler than full RDFS/OWL. It is not designed for reasoning or inferencing. Instead:
- Vocabularies are open and identifier-only. A class is just a name with a label. A property is just a name with a label. Properties are not asserted as carrying their own inferential weight.
- Resource shapes carry the API contract. They declare which properties belong on which resource types, with what cardinality, value type, and range — for this server's usage. Shapes constrain at the API boundary, not at the vocabulary level.
- The same property URI may be reused across many tools, contexts, and shapes. That reuse is the whole point of OSLC linked data —
dcterms:title means the same thing everywhere — but each consuming server constrains its usage through its own shapes.
Why this matters: avoid rdfs:domain and rdfs:range on properties in the vocabulary
Asserting rdfs:domain X on a property means "any subject of this property is inferred to be a member of class X." A reasoner running over your data graph will then conclude membership in X for every subject of that property, often unintentionally. The same problem applies to rdfs:range for the object side.
Worse, when properties become coupled to a single domain or range:
- A property defined for one usage cannot be reused in another context without polluting the original meaning.
- Polymorphic relationships (a property whose value can be any of several types) can't be expressed naturally — you end up either creating an artificial supertype or duplicating the property under multiple names.
- The vocabulary becomes brittle: every change to the type hierarchy ripples through all consumers via inference.
OSLC convention: omit rdfs:domain and rdfs:range from property definitions in the vocabulary. Express what you need at the shape level using oslc:occurs, oslc:valueType, oslc:representation, and oslc:range (the shape range, not the vocabulary range). The shape constrains the property as used on this resource type in this server, leaving the property itself free for other consumers to use differently.
What stays in the vocabulary at the document level is one owl:Ontology declaration with publication metadata (title, description, publisher, issue date, license, source, version). This is descriptive bookkeeping about the vocabulary document — it is not OWL reasoning. The OWL keyword is used here only to match the OSLC-OP convention and to give the vocabulary a self-describing header; OSLC servers do not run an OWL reasoner over the graph.
What stays at the term level is the bare minimum for identification:
<#someProperty>
a rdf:Property ;
rdfs:isDefinedBy <vocabularyNamespace> ;
rdfs:label "some property" ;
rdfs:comment "Plain-language description of what this property represents." .
Every term — every class, property, and enumeration individual — carries rdfs:label, rdfs:comment, and rdfs:isDefinedBy pointing at the ontology's base URI. (Enumeration individuals need all three too — a bare rdfs:label triggers a validation error once the term is associated with the ontology.) Use rdfs:comment for the term's human-readable description; do not use dc11:description (Dublin Core 1.1) or dcterms:description at the term level. The dcterms:* properties belong on the owl:Ontology document node (title, description, publisher, …), not on individual terms. See "Namespace discipline" in the authoring approach for why rdfs:isDefinedBy + vann:preferredNamespaceUri matter.
What goes in the shape is the constraint for this server's API:
<#p-someProperty>
a oslc:Property ;
oslc:name "someProperty" ;
oslc:propertyDefinition <vocabularyNamespace#someProperty> ;
dcterms:description "How this property is used on this resource type." ;
oslc:occurs oslc:Zero-or-many ;
oslc:valueType oslc:Resource ;
oslc:representation oslc:Reference ;
oslc:range <vocabularyNamespace#TargetType> ;
oslc:inversePropertyLabel "Inverse Wording" .
This separation — open vocabulary, constraining shape — is the OSLC pattern. The skill name "Define" really means define the vocabulary as identifiers and define the API contract as shapes, not "define an ontology with reasoning."
Relationship to OWL and formal ontologies
Authors coming from the OWL / formal-ontology tradition sometimes read "open vocabulary, no inferencing" as under-engineering. It is not — it is the same separation of concerns the W3C itself ratified, applied to a different job. State the reasoning explicitly so the choice reads as principled, not naive:
- Two different jobs: inference vs. validation. OWL is open-world and optimized for inferring and integrating facts. The digital thread's actual need is closed-world validation — "this requirement MUST have exactly one
verifiedBy link; without it the resource is incomplete." OWL cannot state that natively; constraint languages can. This is precisely why SHACL exists (W3C Recommendation, 2017), and OSLC oslc:ResourceShape is part of SHACL's lineage — Arthur Ryman's Resource Shape 2.0 W3C Member Submission (2014) is one of its ancestors. AAKI's "open vocabulary + constraining shapes" is that split: the vocabulary carries meaning, the shapes carry the contract.
- "No runtime reasoning" is mainstream, not fringe. schema.org (deliberately non-entailing — see its
domainIncludes/rangeIncludes), Wikidata (no OWL-DL entailment in practice), and most production enterprise knowledge graphs run little or no reasoning at query time, for reasons of determinism, performance, and debuggability. OSLC is with the majority here, not against a settled consensus.
- OWL-compatible, not OWL-required — a bridge, not a wall. The vocabulary is plain RDF. Nothing stops a consumer from layering OWL axioms over the published terms or running a reasoner over the instance data. AAKI simply does not make reasoning a precondition for interoperability. Say this out loud to skeptics: AAKI does not reject OWL, it refuses to require it.
- Consume an authoritative ontology when one exists. Where a domain already has a governing formal ontology (SysML v2, ISO 15926, an IOF/BFO-based model, FIBO), align to or import it as the vocabulary layer and add OSLC shapes for the API contract on top. The formal-ontology community becomes an upstream supplier, not a competitor. Greenfield vocabulary authoring is reserved for genuine conceptual gaps (e.g., business motivation, portfolio management).
- The specific simplifications are deliberate and OWL-compatible. Omitting
rdfs:domain/rdfs:range (constraints live in shapes), using oslc:inversePropertyLabel rather than owl:inverseOf (one stored triple rendered both ways, not a materialized inverse), and pairing oslc:superShape with rdfs:subClassOf without runtime entailment are protocol and validation decisions with rationale — not gaps in understanding. Each keeps the vocabulary reusable and the data reasoner-ready for anyone who chooses to reason over it later.
What this means for naming and positioning. AAKI-define produces an application vocabulary plus an API/validation contract in the RDF / linked-data / SHACL tradition — not a formal reasoning ontology. Describe it that way. The bare word "ontology" invites a turf debate with formal-ontology purists that AAKI does not need to win: AAKI's job is connectivity and governance of the digital thread (see docs/AAKI-Overview.md), a gap that formal ontologies do not address and OSLC does.
When to use
- Standing up a new OSLC domain.
- Refactoring an existing vocabulary toward OSLC convention (often: removing
rdfs:domain/rdfs:range and moving the constraints into shapes).
- Aligning a project-local vocabulary with how OSLC-OP publishes vocab/shape docs.
- Designing a domain in a way that lets multiple servers/tools reuse the same properties without coupling.
Naming discipline (the most-violated rule)
Predicates are short, domain-agnostic verb phrases. Never fold the target type into the predicate name unless you genuinely need it for disambiguation.
| Yes | No |
|---|
:amplifiedBy | :amplifiedByMission |
:quantifies | :quantifiesGoal |
:enables | :enablesEndCourseOfAction |
:governsProcess (only when :governs already exists with a different shape range) | — |
The triple <x> :amplifiedByMission <y> reads worse than <x> :amplifiedBy <y>, conflates relationship and range, and breaks polymorphic relationships when the same verb spans multiple ranges. See the OSLC-OP link-guidance.html and the IBM Jazz LinkedData best practices for the broader rationale.
This rule reinforces the open-vocabulary principle: short verb-phrase names are reusable across contexts; type-folded names are coupled to one usage.
Link ownership and inverse-direction labels
OSLC link triples are stored on one side. Every link property in a shape SHOULD declare:
oslc:inversePropertyLabel — human-readable label for the reverse direction (title case). Mirrors jrs:inversePropertyLabel used by IBM Jazz Reporting Services.
This property is not strictly required — a shape without it is still well-formed, and basic link creation works fine — but it is strongly recommended because it enables discovery and labeling of incoming links without hardcoded client-side tables. With it, an OSLC browser viewing the target side of a relationship renders the incoming link with a human-readable inverse label, and an OSLC LDM /discover-links service can label discovered reverse triples by reflecting off the source-side shape. Without it, clients fall back to the SPARQL-style ^<predicateName> form (see "Fallback rendering" below).
The triple is always stored once, on the side whose shape declares the forward property. There is no separate inverse predicate to assert; the reverse direction is found by swapping subject and object on the same forward predicate. The full proto-spec, including the link-ownership convention for asymmetric pairs like oslc_cm:implementsRequirement / oslc_rm:implementedBy, is in docs/OSLC-Shape-Extensions.md.
Fallback rendering (informal recommendation)
When a forward property has no oslc:inversePropertyLabel, clients rendering its inverse view should:
- Use a visual direction cue that does not depend on label text (italics, a back-arrow icon, a distinct color, or an "Incoming" section).
- For plain-text contexts (LDM JSON serializations, CSV exports, accessibility readers), use the SPARQL property-path convention: prefix the forward predicate's
oslc:name with ^, e.g., ^implementsRequirement. This is the closest thing RDF has to a standard textual inverse marker and is unmistakable in plain text.
This is guidance, not a requirement. The point is that absence-of-label should never silently look like a forward link.
ResourceShape rules
- One shape per instantiable class. Skip abstract supertypes, enumerations, and specialized subclasses that fold into a parent + category property.
- Every shape has
dcterms:title, dcterms:description, and oslc:describes (pointing at the class URI in the vocabulary).
- Each
oslc:property constraint includes:
oslc:name (camelCase, matching the property URI's local name)oslc:propertyDefinition (the property URI from the vocabulary)dcterms:description describing the property's role on this resource typeoslc:occurs — Zero-or-one | Exactly-one | Zero-or-many | One-or-manyoslc:valueType — xsd:string, xsd:dateTime, oslc:Resource, etc.- For link properties:
oslc:representation oslc:Reference, oslc:range (the shape range — what types this server expects to see at the other end), plus the inverse metadata above when incoming-link discovery and labeling matter (recommended but optional).
- Optional:
oslc:icon (proposed extension) when a type-icon makes sense in UIs.
- Inheritance is manual. OSLC ResourceShapes do not honor
rdfs:subClassOf traversal — that's an inferential mechanism OSLC deliberately avoids. Each concrete shape lists every property it allows, including ones shared across types. Use named property nodes (<#p-title>, <#p-creator>, …) and reference them from each shape's oslc:property list so the duplication is editorial, not by copy-paste.
Enumerations
When a property's value comes from a fixed set of terms (a category, a status, a level), model it with the OSLC enumeration pattern — not as a free xsd:string. See the OSLC Core vocabulary Enumerations section.
-
In the vocabulary, declare the enumeration as a plain rdfs:Class (not rdfs:subClassOf rdfs:Datatype), with rdfs:label and rdfs:comment.
-
Declare each allowed value as an individual of that class, each with an rdfs:label:
ex:AssessmentCategory
a rdfs:Class ;
rdfs:label "Assessment Category" ;
rdfs:comment "The SWOT category of an Assessment." .
ex:AssessmentCategory-Strength a ex:AssessmentCategory ; rdfs:label "Strength" .
ex:AssessmentCategory-Weakness a ex:AssessmentCategory ; rdfs:label "Weakness" .
-
In the shape, reference the enumeration with oslc:range only — omit oslc:valueType and oslc:allowedValue. oslc:range already constrains the value to be an instance of the enumeration class:
<#p-assessmentCategory>
a oslc:Property ;
oslc:name "assessmentCategory" ;
oslc:propertyDefinition ex:assessmentCategory ;
oslc:occurs oslc:Exactly-one ;
oslc:range ex:AssessmentCategory .
This mirrors the OSLC CM oslc_cm:state constraint, which uses oslc:range oslc_cm:State with no oslc:valueType:
:state a oslc:Property ;
oslc:name "state" ;
oslc:occurs oslc:Zero-or-one ;
oslc:propertyDefinition oslc_cm:state ;
oslc:range oslc_cm:State ;
dcterms:description "…"^^rdf:XMLLiteral .
-
Add oslc:allowedValue only to restrict a particular shape to a subset of the enumeration's values (e.g., a shape that permits only Strength and Opportunity). If the shape allows the whole enumeration, oslc:allowedValue is unnecessary.
The enumeration values live in the vocabulary (open for extension), so other servers can add values or restrict to subsets through their own shapes — the same open-vocabulary + constraining-shape split as everything else.
HTML rendering
Two acceptable styles:
-
OSLC-OP / ReSpec style (matches the published specs at https://github.com/oslc-op/oslc-specs/tree/master/specs/am). Two ReSpec-formatted documents per domain — <domain>-vocab.html and <domain>-shapes.html — with editors, namespaces, related work, and a bibliography in the ReSpec config. Use this when the domain is being prepared for OSLC-OP submission.
ReSpec version: use v2.1.32 of the OASIS ReSpec build. The published OSLC-OP specs (including AM) currently reference older versions (e.g., v2.1.29 in AM); do not copy that version when starting a new domain — pin the more recent v2.1.32 to pick up bug fixes and styling improvements:
<script
src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/oasis-tcs/tab-respec@v2.1.32/builds/respec-oasis-common.min.js"
async class="remove"></script>
-
Self-contained project HTML (matches bmm-server/config/domain/BMM-Shapes.html). Plain HTML with a table of contents, one section per shape, and a property table per shape (Name, Type, Cardinality, Description, Inverse). Use this for project-local domains.
In either style, the shapes HTML must:
- Have a navigable table of contents linking to each shape.
- Render a property table per shape with the inverse column populated for link properties.
- Include the
oslc:describes class URI in the section heading or a side-table.
Quality checks before finishing
-
Both .ttl files parse successfully as Turtle. Any RDF parser will do (rapper, rdflib, Apache Jena's riot, etc.). A typo or unbalanced bracket that survives into a published vocabulary breaks every consumer downstream — verify before declaring done.
-
Run the OSLC-OP ShapeChecker against both files: https://github.com/oslc-op/oslc-specs/tree/master/tools/ShapeChecker. It validates that resource shapes are well-formed against OSLC Core, that property references resolve, that cardinality and value-type values are from the allowed enumerations, and that the vocabulary cross-references are consistent. A clean ShapeChecker run is the strongest single signal that the artifacts are publication-quality.
Example invocation (run from the cloned oslc-specs/tools/ShapeChecker/ directory after a Gradle build):
build/install/ShapeChecker/bin/ShapeChecker \
-C -t Error -q unusedVocabulary \
-v /absolute/path/to/<Domain>.ttl \
-s /absolute/path/to/<Domain>-Shapes.ttl
-C enables the cross-reference / consistency check.-t Error sets the failure threshold to errors only (warnings reported but not fatal).-q unusedVocabulary suppresses the "unused vocabulary term" finding, which is normally noisy when shapes reference a subset of the vocabulary's terms.-v and -s point at the vocabulary and shapes files respectively.
Concrete worked invocation (BMM domain in this workspace):
build/install/ShapeChecker/bin/ShapeChecker \
-C -t Error -q unusedVocabulary \
-v /Users/jamsden/Developer/OSLC/oslc4js/bmm-server/config/domain/BMM.ttl \
-s /Users/jamsden/Developer/OSLC/oslc4js/bmm-server/config/domain/BMM-Shapes.ttl
-
The vocabulary file opens with one owl:Ontology declaration (subject = the base namespace URI, no trailing #) carrying publication metadata, vann:preferredNamespacePrefix, and vann:preferredNamespaceUri (the # form).
-
Every term (class, property, enumeration individual) carries rdfs:isDefinedBy <ontology-base-URI> plus rdfs:label and rdfs:comment. Without isDefinedBy + preferredNamespaceUri, ShapeChecker floods with "subject not part of an ontology" findings.
-
The vocabulary file declares classes and properties as plain identifiers — no rdfs:domain or rdfs:range (those would invite reasoning the rest of the OSLC stack does not perform).
-
Every property URI used in a shape exists in the vocabulary.
-
Every link property in a shape that should support incoming-link discovery declares oslc:inversePropertyLabel (strongly recommended; not strictly required for shape validity).
-
oslc:range values on link properties refer to classes that exist in the vocabulary.
-
Property names match camelCase; predicates are short verb phrases without target-type folding.
-
The HTML renders without errors in a modern browser.
-
Resource shape count matches the count of instantiable classes — supertypes and enums do not have shapes.
When you finish, summarize: count of classes, link properties, literal properties, shapes, and any concepts you deliberately omitted (with a one-line rationale each).
Authoring approach (generic, reusable)
Brief an AI assistant (or yourself) with a prompt of roughly this shape, replacing the bracketed parts with values for your domain. The structure has been validated against multiple domains and reproduces the same naming-discipline + open-vocabulary + constraining-shape outcome.
You are authoring an RDF vocabulary, OSLC ResourceShapes, and human-readable HTML for [Domain Name] — a domain whose authoritative source is [spec URL or document]. The output will drive an OSLC 3.0 server; the vocabulary is its open identifier set, and the shapes are the API contract that constrains usage on this server.
Deliverables (place in config/domain/):
[Prefix].ttl — the open RDF vocabulary. Begin with one owl:Ontology declaration carrying publication metadata for the vocabulary as a whole (including vann:preferredNamespaceUri), then declare one rdf:Class per type and one rdf:Property per attribute and forward link. On each term use only rdfs:label, rdfs:comment, and rdfs:isDefinedBy (pointing at the ontology's base URI). Do not add rdfs:domain or rdfs:range to properties — leave them open so the same identifier can be reused across contexts.[Prefix]-Shapes.ttl — one oslc:ResourceShape per instantiable class, declaring how the open vocabulary is used and constrained on this server.[Prefix]-vocab.html — human-browsable rendering of the vocabulary.[Prefix]-Shapes.html — human-browsable rendering of the shapes.
Namespaces:
@prefix [prefix]: <[domain-namespace-URI]#> .
@prefix oslc: <http://open-services.net/ns/core#> .
@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .
@prefix xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .
@prefix dcterms: <http://purl.org/dc/terms/> .
@prefix vann: <http://purl.org/vocab/vann/> .
Ontology declaration (top of [Prefix].ttl): declare the vocabulary's namespace as an owl:Ontology with the standard OSLC-OP publication metadata. This is document-level bookkeeping — it does not enable reasoning over instance data. Identify the ontology by the base URI without the trailing # (<[domain-namespace-URI]>); the terms live in the # namespace ([domain-namespace-URI]#…, which is what the [prefix]: prefix maps to). Declare vann:preferredNamespaceUri (the # form) so tools and consumers can associate the terms with this ontology. Match the structure used in the OSLC-OP specs:
<[domain-namespace-URI]>
a owl:Ontology ;
dcterms:title "[Domain Name] Vocabulary" ;
rdfs:label "[Domain Name] Vocabulary" ;
dcterms:description "All vocabulary URIs defined in the [Domain Name] namespace."^^rdf:XMLLiteral ;
vann:preferredNamespacePrefix "[prefix]" ;
vann:preferredNamespaceUri "[domain-namespace-URI]#" ;
dcterms:publisher <[publisher-URL]> ;
dcterms:issued "[YYYY-MM-DD]"^^xsd:date ;
dcterms:license <http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0> ;
dcterms:source <[canonical-source-URL]> ;
dcterms:isPartOf <[spec-html-URL]> ;
dcterms:hasVersion "[version-tag]" ;
dcterms:dateCopyrighted "[year-or-range]" .
Substitute [Domain Name], [prefix], [publisher-URL], [YYYY-MM-DD], [canonical-source-URL], [spec-html-URL], [version-tag], and [year-or-range] with values for the new domain. The dcterms:license URI may be replaced with whatever license applies to the vocabulary.
Namespace discipline. Three related points that let tools (ShapeChecker, browsers, LDM) associate every term with its vocabulary — skip them and you get a flood of "subject not part of an ontology" and "unused vocabulary" findings:
- Ontology URI vs. term namespace. The
owl:Ontology subject is the base URI without the trailing # (<[domain-namespace-URI]>); terms are in the # namespace ([domain-namespace-URI]#Term). Declare both vann:preferredNamespacePrefix and vann:preferredNamespaceUri "[domain-namespace-URI]#".
rdfs:isDefinedBy on every term. Give each class, property, and enumeration individual rdfs:isDefinedBy <[domain-namespace-URI]> (pointing at the ontology's base URI). This is what ties the term to the ontology for consuming tools.- Casing. The prefix is a short lowercase token (
bmm, oslc, dcterms), by universal RDF convention. The namespace URI, however, is copied verbatim from the owning authority and is case-sensitive — use exactly what they publish. OMG spec namespaces use uppercase acronyms (http://www.omg.org/spec/BMM#, .../SysML#, .../UML#), so an uppercase BMM in the URI is correct and must not be lowercased; a lowercased URI would be a different, non-canonical namespace. Match the authority, whatever its case.
Naming rules: short, domain-agnostic verb-phrase predicates. Do not fold the target type into the predicate name unless required for disambiguation between two predicates that share the verb. Predicates read as verbs (amplifiedBy, quantifies, channelsEffortsToward), not as nouns or relationship-record names.
Resource shape rules: every instantiable class gets one shape with dcterms:title, dcterms:description, and oslc:describes. For each property the class supports, add an oslc:property constraint with oslc:name, oslc:propertyDefinition, dcterms:description, oslc:occurs, oslc:valueType, plus (for link properties) oslc:representation oslc:Reference, oslc:range, and oslc:inversePropertyLabel.
Inverse-direction label (SHOULD, not MUST): for every property whose oslc:valueType is oslc:Resource and where incoming-link discovery and labeling matter, declare oslc:inversePropertyLabel with the human-readable inverse wording in title case. The name mirrors jrs:inversePropertyLabel used by IBM Jazz Reporting Services. Strongly recommended — it lets OSLC browsers render incoming links with proper labels and lets an OSLC LDM /discover-links service label discovered reverse triples without hardcoded client-side tables. Not strictly required for shape validity; clients fall back to the SPARQL-style ^<predicateName> form for unlabeled inverses. The triple itself is stored exactly once, on the side whose shape declares the forward property. There is no separate inverse predicate to assert.
HTML rendering: generate a self-contained, browsable document for both the vocabulary and the shapes. The shapes HTML must include a TOC and per-shape property tables with columns: Name, Type, Cardinality, Description, Inverse.
Quality checks before finishing:
- Both
.ttl files parse successfully as Turtle (use any RDF parser: rapper, rdflib, Jena's riot, etc.).
- Run the OSLC-OP ShapeChecker (https://github.com/oslc-op/oslc-specs/tree/master/tools/ShapeChecker) against both files and resolve every reported issue. ShapeChecker validates that the vocabulary and shapes are well-formed against OSLC Core and that cross-references are consistent.
- The vocabulary file opens with one
owl:Ontology declaration (subject = base namespace URI, no trailing #) carrying publication metadata plus vann:preferredNamespacePrefix and vann:preferredNamespaceUri (the # form).
- Every term (class, property, enumeration individual) carries
rdfs:isDefinedBy <ontology-base-URI>, rdfs:label, and rdfs:comment.
- The vocabulary file declares classes and properties as plain identifiers — no
rdfs:domain/rdfs:range on properties.
- Every property URI used in a shape exists in the vocabulary.
- Every link property whose incoming side should be discoverable declares
oslc:inversePropertyLabel (recommended; not strictly required).
oslc:range values on link properties refer to classes that exist in the vocabulary.- Property names match camelCase; predicates are short verb phrases without target-type folding.
- The HTML renders cleanly.
- Resource shape count equals the count of instantiable classes — supertypes and enums do not have shapes.
When you finish, summarize: count of classes, link properties, literal properties, shapes, and any concepts you deliberately omitted (with a one-line rationale each).
The prompt is reusable across domains. Replace [Domain Name], [spec URL], [Prefix], [prefix], and [domain-namespace-URI] with values for the new domain.
References
Common mistakes
| Mistake | Fix |
|---|
Putting rdfs:domain / rdfs:range on properties in the vocabulary | Constrain at the shape level instead. The vocabulary stays open and reusable; the shape declares how the property is used on each resource type. |
Describing terms with dc11:description or dcterms:description | Terms use rdfs:comment (with rdfs:label). Reserve dcterms:* for the owl:Ontology document node. |
Missing rdfs:label on terms | Every class, property, and enumeration individual needs an rdfs:label. |
Modeling a fixed value set as xsd:string | Use the enumeration pattern: an rdfs:Class + individuals in the vocabulary, referenced from the shape by oslc:range (no oslc:valueType/oslc:allowedValue unless restricting to a subset). See "Enumerations". |
Declaring an enumeration as rdfs:subClassOf rdfs:Datatype | An enumeration is a plain rdfs:Class whose instances are the allowed-value individuals. |
| Treating shapes as inferable subtypes of one another | OSLC shapes do not inherit. Enumerate every property on every concrete shape, using named property nodes to keep maintenance tractable. |
| One shape per class (including abstract supertypes) | Shapes are only for instantiable classes. Supertypes structure the type hierarchy; they are never created directly. |
| Java-style predicate naming | Drop the target-type suffix (:amplifiedByMission → :amplifiedBy). |
| Asserting both directions of a link | The triple is stored once. The inverse URI is metadata, not a triple. |
| Missing inverse-direction label on a link property where incoming-link discovery matters | Add oslc:inversePropertyLabel so clients can label incoming-link discovery results. The shape is still valid without it; clients fall back to rendering the SPARQL-style ^<predicateName> form. |
| Duplicating property constraints across shapes by copy-paste | Use named property nodes (<#p-title>) and reference them from each shape's oslc:property list. |
| Designing for reasoning ("the system will infer that…") | OSLC servers don't reason. If a constraint matters at the API, encode it in the shape; if it matters as a runtime check, use SHACL alongside, but don't expect property-level inference. |
Vocabulary file with no owl:Ontology header | Add the ontology declaration block at the top with title, description, publisher, issue date, license, source, version, and copyright — match the OSLC-OP convention. It's metadata, not reasoning. |
| Terms not associated with the ontology (ShapeChecker: "subject not part of an ontology" / "unused vocabulary") | Declare vann:preferredNamespaceUri "<base>#" on the ontology and rdfs:isDefinedBy <base> on every term. Ontology subject = base URI (no #); terms live in the # namespace. |
| Lowercasing the namespace URI to match the prefix | Prefixes are lowercase by convention (bmm), but the namespace URI is case-sensitive and copied verbatim from the owning authority — OMG spec URIs use uppercase acronyms (…/spec/BMM#). Don't lowercase the URI. |
Confusing owl:Ontology document metadata with OWL reasoning over instances | The document declares itself an ontology only to publish its identity and provenance. OSLC servers do not run an OWL reasoner; the choice of owl:Ontology over (say) rdfs:Resource is purely conventional. |
