Category:Values

The Values category introduces a set of foundational classes that represent "values" as OWL classes where a value is an immutable piece of information without a specific lifetime or identity independent of the properties that have a value as their subject.

Subtypes of Value are intended to include semantic, business relevant classes that are not independent, mediating or relative things. While Values as defined here, in some cases, seem to replicate XSD data types they are intended to use, extend and build-on XSD data types for "business meaningful values".

Business meaningful values (which we will call "Business Semantic Values") are things like amount, name, postal address, mass, duration, currency and metrics - concepts that make sense in the business domain and are the types of properties of business entities, but not they are not business entities in themselves. These values are the type (range) of properties that represent the qualities and characteristics of the entities in our business domain such as people, places, transactions and financial instruments. In contrast to semantic values, primitive datatypes, such as "Real", "Integer" or "String", frequently have no business meaning on their own.As the intent of the Value classes is to capture business meaning, the Value classes are not intended to be used directly in domain models.

Subclasses of Value classes that capture business semantics are intended for use in domain models. In other languages, such as UML, this intent to only use subclasses is known as an "Abstract" class.