Class-Instance and Subclass-Superclass Associations

The exported XTM file will contain some automatically generated associations representing the subclass-superclass relationship between the classes in the Protégé class hierarchy and representing the class-instance relationship between the Protégé classes and instances. These associations and the association roles are typed by unnamed topics. In some applications, it may be desirable to give these topics names and this is easily achieved by the following steps.

Creating Names for Default Associations

  1. Create a new instance of the TOPIC class.

  2. Add the desired name to the names slot of the new TOPIC instance.

  3. Add the subject indicator string for the association/role typing topic you wish to name to the Subject Indicators slot.

The subject indicators used in the export process are shown in the table below

Table 4.1. Subject Indicators for Default Association/Role Types

Topic Subject Indicator
Class-instance association type http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/index.html#psi-at-class-instance
Class role http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/index.html#psi-role-class
Instance role http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/index.html#psi-role-instance
Superclass-subclass association type http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/core.xtm#superclass-subclass
Superclass role http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/core.xtm#superclass
Subclass role http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/core.xtm#subclass