RDF-only Building Blocks

Building Blocks can be defined that use RDF only. An RDF building block can:

Define RDF (TTL) examples how to use the Semantic model
Apply SHACL Shapes to validate examples
Perform transforms and validate results

Test cases and examples as either TTL or JSONLD will undergo syntax and SHACL validation.

examples.yaml can have embedded TTL - eg.

- title: Example of SOSA ObservationCollection
  comment:
    This class is a target for the SOSA v 1.1 update. 

  snippets:
    - language: turtle
      code: |-
        @prefix sosa: <http://www.w3.org/ns/sosa/> .
        @prefix xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .
        @prefix eg: <http://example.org/my-feature/> .
        @prefix skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#> .

        eg:c1 a sosa:ObservationCollection ;
          sosa:hasMember eg:pop1999, eg:pop2000 ;
          sosa:observedProperty <http://dbpedia.org/ontology/population> ;
        .

Ontology

A building block can declare an ontology document — an RDF file that defines the classes, properties, and relationships that the building block’s data model is based on.

The ontology property in bblock.json accepts a file path (relative to the building block directory) or a URL:

{
  "ontology": "ontology.ttl"
}

If ontology is not set, the postprocessor will automatically look for ontology.ttl or ontology.owl in the building block directory and use the first one found.

The resolved ontology is published as part of the build output and included in the building block’s register entry.

Semantic annotations

Two metadata properties allow a building block to be linked to RDF concepts and classes:

`concept`

concept is an array of URIs for the RDF concept(s) that this building block represents (mapped to skos:closeMatch in the register).

{
  "concept": [
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/sosa/Observation"
  ]
}

`rdfType`

rdfType is an array of URIs for the RDF class(es) that instances of this building block conform to (mapped to rdfs:subClassOf in the register). Use this when you want to declare that instances of the building block belong to a particular RDF class.

{
  "rdfType": [
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/sosa/Observation"
  ]
}