Definitions Some of the key terms in IDEF5 and the basic IDEF5 Schematic Language Symbols, see figure.: ;Kind : Informally, a group of individuals that share some set of distinguished characteristics. More formally, kinds are properties typically expressed by common nouns such as ‘employee’, ‘machine’, and ‘lathe’. ;Individual : The most logically basic kind of real world object. Prominent examples include human persons, concrete physical objects, and certain abstract objects such as programs. Unlike objects of higher logical orders such as properties and relations, individuals essentially are not multiply instantiable. Individuals are also known as first-order objects. ;Referent : A construct in the IDEF5 elaboration language used to refer to a kind, object, property, relation, or process kind in another ontology or an IDEF model. ;Relation : An abstract, general association or connection that holds between two or more objects. Like properties, relations are multiply instantiable. The objects among which a relation holds in a particular instance are known as its arguments. ;State : A property, generally indicated by an adjective rather than a common noun, that is characteristic of objects of a certain kind at a certain point within a process. For example, water can be in frozen, liquid, or gaseous states. ;Process : A real world event or state of affairs involving one or more individuals over some (possibly instantaneous) interval of time. Typically, a process involves some sort of change in the properties of one or more of the individuals within the process. Because of the ambiguity in the term “process”, sometimes referred to as process instance.
Diagram types Various diagram types, or schematics, can be constructed in the IDEF5 Schematic Language. The purpose of these schematics, like that of any representation, is to represent information visually. Thus, semantic rules must be provided for interpreting every possible schematic. These rules are provided by outlining the rules for interpreting the most basic constructs of the language, then applying them recursively to more complex constructs. There are four primary schematic types derived from the basic IDEF5 Schematic Language which can be used to capture ontology information directly in a form that is intuitive to the domain expert. •
Classification Schematics : Classification schematics provide mechanisms for humans to organize knowledge into logical taxonomies. Of particular merit are two types of classification: description subsumption and
natural kind classification. •
Composition Schematics : Composition schematics serve as mechanisms to represent graphically the "part-of" relation that is so common among components of an ontology. •
Relation Schematics : Relation schematics allow ontology developers to visualize and understand relations among kinds in a domain, and can also be used to capture and display relations between first-order relations. •
Object State Schematics : Because there is no clean division between information about kinds and states and information about processes, the IDEF5 schematic language enables modelers to express fairly detailed object-centered process information (i.e., information about kinds of objects and the various states they can be in relative to certain processes). Diagrams built from these constructs are known as Object-State Schematics. Image:4-27 Classification of Resources.jpg|Classification Schematics Image:3-20 Composition Schematic.jpg|Composition Schematics Image:4-21 Partial Relation Taxonomy.jpg|Relation Schematics Image:4-37 Example Object State Schematic.jpg|Object State Schematics == See also ==