Modelling vCards in RDFhttp://norman.walsh.name/2005/12/05/vcard81572005-12-05T22:40:37-05:00$Date: 2005-12-05 23:24:41 -0500 (Mon, 05 Dec 2005) $NormanWalsh2005Norman WalshYet another stab at modelling names and addresses.http://norman.walsh.name/2005/11/25/contactshttp://norman.walsh.name/2005/11/30/contactsFor all
the appeal of
AddressVocab,
it's just too hard to use. Starting from my “contacts” data, there's no
way to get to the fine granularity of that vocabulary except by painful
heuristics. And really, it's way too fine for my purposes.Much better, as
RobertoGarcia
suggested, would be to simply use
vCard.The problem with vCard is that the
existing RDF/XML
vocabulary for vCards isn't very good. With all due respect to the
author, RDF and RDF best practices have evolved since it's inception in
early 2001.DanConnolly suggested that (a) some work in the area of defining a more
modern RDF ontology for vCard data would be valuable and (b) that starting
with what the
microformats
folks have done with
a
profile
of vCard for
hCard
would be a good place to start.Well, heck, lead me far enough down the path and even I can figure
out what direction to go.So I started with the hCard profile and the
vCard MIME
Directory Profile and tried to construct an ontology in the
most straightforward way I could.The result has
five classes and about forty properties. In broad strokes:There's a VCard class (with the bulk of the properties:
fn,
n,
adr,
email,
phone, etc.)
for vCards themselves,a Name class to hold the structured name properties
(family-name, given-name, etc.),
an Address class to hold the structured (postal)
address properties (post-office-box, street-address, locality, etc.),
an Organization class to hold the properties
associated with an organization (organization-name and
organization-unit),
and a Key class to hold the properties associated
with a key (key-value and possibly
encoding).
I borrrowed the Point class from the
http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos# vocabulary for the
geo property. I was tempted to borrow the FOAF name
properties but decided there wasn't quite enough correlation between the
vCard parts and the FOAF parts.Here's what I ended up with:# -*- N3 -*-
@prefix owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .
@prefix xs: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .
@prefix v: <http://nwalsh.com/rdf/vCard#> .
@prefix geo: <http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#> .
@prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/> .
@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
<http://nwalsh.com/rdf/vCard> a owl:Ontology;
rdfs:comment "Norm's attempt at a vCard/hCard RDF ontology." .
# ------------------------------------------------------------
v:VCard a owl:Class;
rdfs:comment "Resources that are vCards." .
v:Name a owl:Class;
rdfs:comment "Resources that are vCard personal names." .
v:Address a owl:Class;
rdfs:comment "Resources that are vCard (postal) addresses." .
v:Organization a owl:Class;
rdfs:comment "Resources that are vCard organizations." .
v:Key a owl:Class;
rdfs:comment "Resources that are vCard keys." .
# ------------------------------------------------------------
v:type a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:comment "Several vCard resources can have an associated type." .
v:encoding a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:comment "Several vCard resources can have an associated encoding." .
# ------------------------------------------------------------
v:fn a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:comment "A formatted personal name." .
v:n a owl:ObjectProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:range v:Name;
rdfs:comment "A vCard personal name resource." .
v:family-name a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:Name;
rdfs:comment "A person's family name." .
v:given-name a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:Name;
rdfs:comment "A person's given name." .
v:additional-name a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:Name;
rdfs:comment "A person's additional name." .
v:honorific-prefix a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:Name;
rdfs:comment "A person's honorific prefix." .
v:honorific-suffix a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:Name;
rdfs:comment "A person's honorific suffix." .
v:photo a owl:ObjectProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:comment "A photograph." .
v:bday a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:range xs:date;
rdfs:comment "A birthday." .
v:adr a owl:ObjectProperty;
rdfs:range v:Address;
rdfs:comment "A vCard address resource" .
v:post-office-box a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:Address;
rdfs:comment "The post office box of a postal address." .
v:extended-address a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:Address;
rdfs:comment "The extended address of a postal address." .
v:street-address a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:Address;
rdfs:comment "The street address of a postal address." .
v:locality a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:Address;
rdfs:comment "The locality (e.g., city) of a postal address." .
v:region a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:Address;
rdfs:comment "The region (e.g., state or province) of a postal address." .
v:postal-code a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:Address;
rdfs:comment "The postal code (e.g., U.S. ZIP code) of a postal address." .
v:country-name a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:Address;
rdfs:comment "The country of a postal address." .
v:label a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:Address;
rdfs:comment "The formatted version of a postal address (a string with embedded line breaks, punctuation, etc.)." .
v:tel a owl:ObjectProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:comment "A telephone number." .
v:email a owl:ObjectProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:comment "An email address." .
v:mailer a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:comment "The mailer associated with a vCard." .
v:tz a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:comment "The timezone." .
v:geo a owl:ObjectProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:range geo:Point;
rdfs:comment "Geographic information (a latitude and longitude)" .
v:title a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:comment "A person's title." .
v:role a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:comment "The role a person plays within an organization." .
v:logo a owl:ObjectProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:comment "A logo." .
v:agent a owl:ObjectProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:range v:VCard;
rdfs:comment "A person that acts as one's agent." .
v:org a owl:ObjectProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:range v:Organization;
rdfs:comment "An organization." .
v:organization-name a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:Organization;
rdfs:comment "The name of an organization." .
v:organization-unit a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:Organization;
rdfs:comment "The name of a unit within a larger organization." .
v:category a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:comment "A category." .
v:note a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:comment "Notes." .
# How do I make the range a date or a dateTime?
v:rev a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:range xs:dateTime;
rdfs:comment "The timestamp of a revision." .
v:sort-string a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:comment "A sort string." .
v:sound a owl:ObjectProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:comment "A sound (e.g., a greeting)." .
v:uid a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:comment "A UID." .
v:url a owl:ObjectProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:comment "A URL." .
v:class a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:comment "The class (e.g., public, private, etc.) of a vCard." .
v:key a owl:ObjectProperty;
rdfs:domain v:VCard;
rdfs:range v:Key;
rdfs:comment "The key (e.g, PKI key)." .
v:key-value a owl:DatatypeProperty;
rdfs:domain v:Key;
rdfs:comment "The key value." .
There's certainly room for discussion about whether this is
exactly the right selection of properties to include, and whether these
are exactly the right modelling choices, but it “feels” pretty good.
I'll try to incorporate what feedback I get.In the larger context of my address book, I'm currently just
using the adr property on my
Contact class, instead of trying to model each of
my contacts as a vCard. But that's something I can change later if
there seems to be value in modelling them as vCards.