Multiple Vocabulary Facility (MVF) Ontology
type: Ontology
abstract: The MVF ontology consists of three components: - a core ontology corresponding to the MVF metamodel (this ontology) - an extension representing the subset of the ISO 1087 reference vocabulary used in other ISO standards for vocabulary representation, - an extension that incorporates additional vocabulary from ISO 1087 for terminology science. MVF also reuses several ontologies from the OMG Commons library for specific patterns, including designations, collections, and classifiers.
contributor: Daniel Brookshire, Dassault Systemes
contributor: Davide Sottara, Mayo Clinic
contributor: Elisa Kendall, Thematix Partners LLC
contributor: Evan Wallace, U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
contributor: Jim Logan, Ontogenesis Solutions, LLC
contributor: Pete Rivett, Adaptive Analytics, Inc.
contributor: Roy Bell, Thematix Partners LLC
contributor: Stephen Powley, Coventry University
license: Copyright (c) 2019-2025 Thematix Partners LLC Copyright (c) 2019-2025 agnos.ai U.K. Ltd Copyright (c) 2020-2025 Mayo Clinic Copyright (c) 2020-2025 Object Management Group, Inc. Copyright (c) 2022-2023 QuoteWell Insurance Services, LLC Copyright (c) 2024-2025 Adaptive Analytics, Inc. Copyright (c) 2024-2025 Coventry University Copyright (c) 2024-2025 Dassault Systemes Copyright (c) 2024-2025 Ontogenesis Solutions, LLC Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. See https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT.
imports: AnnotationVocabulary
imports: Classifiers
imports: Collections
imports: ContextualDesignators
imports: Designators
imports: Languages
imports: Organizations
imports: TextDatatype
version IRI: MultipleVocabularyFacility
change note: The https://www.omg.org/spec/MVF/20230501/MultipleVocabularyFacility.rdf version of the ontology was modified to loosen constraints on restrictions on the number of names, descriptions, and URIs an MVF element can have to facilitate cases where the same exact term is duplicated across controlled vocabularies and are mapped using owl:sameAs, which occurs in certain pharmaceutical cases (e.g., across jurisdictions where the terms are identical but repeated, as in MEDdra terms that are repeated in the EMA SPOR controlled vocabularies, to reuse hasTextualName from Commons 1.2 (MVF11-13), to loosen the restriction on vocabulary entry, on property denotes, to make it optional (MVF11-18), to integrate new constructs from Commons 1.3, eliminating the dependencies on LCC (MVF11-21), to remove the inverse on isInVocabulary (MVF11-20), to add a descriptive reference property (MVF11-4), and to deprecate the abbreviation class (MVF11-17).
copyright: Copyright (c) 2019-2025 Thematix Partners LLC
copyright: Copyright (c) 2019-2025 agnos.ai U.K. Ltd
copyright: Copyright (c) 2020-2025 Mayo Clinic
copyright: Copyright (c) 2020-2025 Object Management Group, Inc.
copyright: Copyright (c) 2022-2023 QuoteWell Insurance Services, LLC
copyright: Copyright (c) 2024-2025 Adaptive Analytics, Inc.
copyright: Copyright (c) 2024-2025 Coventry University
copyright: Copyright (c) 2024-2025 Dassault Systemes
copyright: Copyright (c) 2024-2025 Ontogenesis Solutions, LLC

Abbreviation
type: Class
deprecated: true
equivalent class: vocabulary entry

community
type: Class
subclass of: MVF element
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: uses
  on class: vocabulary
  min qualified cardinality: 0
definition: group of individuals that share a natural language and have a shared set of terms used to express concepts in their domain of interest
note: We refer to a set of terms that is distinguished from general use of the natural language as a vernacular. The community may include people that share a profession, are members of the same enterprise or organization or are collaborating on a particular technology.

MVF dictionary
type: Class
subclass of: StructuredCollection
subclass of: MVF element
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: hasMember
  on class: MVF entry
  min qualified cardinality: 0
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: hasMember
  on class: vocabulary
  min qualified cardinality: 0
definition: collection (by reference, or possibly inclusion) of vocabularies that share a set of MVFEntries
note: Each vocabulary is a container for vocabulary entries that each represent the association of a term in that vocabulary with one of the MVFEntries identified in that dictionary. A modeling environment may include multiple dictionaries, but they must address mutually exclusive concepts. Typically, one dictionary will address concepts of the modeling language metamodel, and another dictionary will address concepts of user-defined modeling elements.

MVF element
type: Class
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: hasURL
  min qualified cardinality: 0
  on data range: anyURI
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: has descriptive reference
  min qualified cardinality: 0
  on data range: anyURI
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: hasDescription
  min qualified cardinality: 0
  on data range: string
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: hasTextualName
  min qualified cardinality: 0
  on data range: string
definition: abstract entity in a multiple vocabulary facility model or ontology
explanatory note: An MVF element corresponds roughly to an element in category theory, namely one that can be an object of any category, and to 'entity' in many top level ontologies.
usage note: Typically there will be exactly one URI, description, and name for a term, but issues arise when the same term is intentionally duplicated across controlled vocabularies, which happens from time to time in bioinformatics, for example.
usage note: Use the Dublin Core 'references' annotation for any relevant citations or other references, corresponding to the 'reference' property in the MVF metamodel.

MVF entry
type: Class
subclass of: MVF element
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: has broader entry
  all values from: MVF entry
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: has contextual entry
  all values from: MVF entry
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: isSignifiedBy
  on class: vocabulary entry
  min qualified cardinality: 0
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: has semantic reference
  min qualified cardinality: 0
  on data range: string
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: isIncludedIn
  on class: MVF dictionary
  qualified cardinality: 1
source: ISO 1087 Terminology work and terminology science - Vocabulary, Second edition, 2019-09, clause 3.2.7
definition: unit of knowledge created by a unique combination of characteristics
note: An MVF entry is linked to one or more model elements that represent that concept in the modeling environment.
note: Concepts [MVF entries] are not necessarily bound to particular natural languages. They are, however, influenced by the social or cultural background which often leads to different categorizations.
note: From an ISO 1087 perspective, this is the concept 'concept' as used and designated by the term 'concept' in terminology work. It is a very different concept from that designated by other domains such as industrial automation or marketing.
note: Note that instances of a class will all reference the same class name and will all have attributes and associations with the same names. It is possible that not every concept is mapped to an entry in every vocabulary, or that not all of the terms and definitions are associated with model elements in the active modeling environment.

term status
type: Class
subclass of: Classifier
subclass of: MVF element
definition: classifier for the standing of a term within its vocabulary

vocabulary
type: Class
subclass of: StructuredCollection
subclass of: MVF element
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: isUsedBy
  on class: community
  min qualified cardinality: 0
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: imports
  on class: vocabulary
  min qualified cardinality: 0
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: has vocabulary entry
  on class: vocabulary entry
  min qualified cardinality: 0
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: hasLanguage
  on class: Language
  qualified cardinality: 1
definition: set of representations of concepts (terms and definitions) for the language of a particular speech community that is expressed in a specified natural language
editorial note: This representation does not address the ordering of imports, which may require an intervening class that has an attribute that is an ordinal number representing the ordering.
note: A speech community may create a vocabulary by specializing an existing vocabulary and overriding selected terms, adding terms for new concepts and incorporating the remaining terms and definitions of the existing vocabulary. This mechanism may be employed to introduce synonyms as the primary terms of the specializing community. Both vocabularies should be in the same natural language so that definitions remain meaningful.

vocabulary entry
type: Class
subclass of: Designation
subclass of: MVF element
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: isDefinedIn
  cardinality: 1
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: denotes
  on class: MVF entry
  max qualified cardinality: 1
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: has status
  on class: term status
  max qualified cardinality: 1
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: is abbreviation
  max qualified cardinality: 1
  on data range: boolean
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: is preferred
  max qualified cardinality: 1
  on data range: boolean
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: isIncludedIn
  on class: vocabulary
  qualified cardinality: 1
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: hasTextualName
  on data range: string
  qualified cardinality: 1
definition: element of a vocabulary (designation) that denotes at most one concept (MVF entry) in the context of that vocabulary
note: The definition and term(s) are expressed in the natural language associated with that vocabulary and the associated user community.

workspace
type: Class
subclass of: Collection
subclass of: MVF element
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: comprises
  on class: MVF dictionary
  min qualified cardinality: 0
subclass of: Restriction
  on property: comprises
  on class: vocabulary
  min qualified cardinality: 0
definition: a set of consistent MVF dictionaries and vocabularies which can be activated in a modeling environment

abbreviates
type: ObjectProperty
sub property of: denotes
domain: Class
  intersection of: vocabulary entry
  intersection of: Restriction
    on property: is abbreviation
    has value: true
inverse of: has abbreviation
definition: is a shortened designation for a term that is used synonymously with that term in the context of a given vocabulary or dictionary

has abbreviation
type: ObjectProperty
sub property of: isSignifiedBy
range: Class
  intersection of: vocabulary entry
  intersection of: Restriction
    on property: is abbreviation
    has value: true
inverse of: abbreviates
definition: has a shortened designation used synonymously in the context of the given vocabulary or dictionary

has broader entry
type: ObjectProperty
definition: has a more general MVF entry than the subject

has contextual entry
type: ObjectProperty
sub property of: isApplicableIn
range: MVF entry
definition: scopes in the context of

has current MVF entry
type: ObjectProperty
sub property of: has MVF entry
range: MVF entry
definition: indicates the applicable MVF entry from the active MVF workspace
note: This property will be implicitly updated when the current workspace changes.

has descriptive reference
type: DatatypeProperty
sub property of: hasURL
range: anyURI
definition: links to any relevant resources that provide further information about the element

hasLanguage
type: ObjectProperty
deprecated: true
equivalent property: hasLanguage

has MVF entry
type: ObjectProperty
range: MVF entry
alternative label: has multiple vocabulary facility entry
definition: links a model element to the corresponding MVF entry (concept), providing a name and definition for that model element
note: There could be many of these in different dictionaries.
explanatory note: hasMVFEntry is a property used to relate an element in any model to a corresponding MVF entry. It corresponds to the property ElementEntry in the metamodel. That property has a UML Element in its domain, which cannot be modeled in the ontology.

has narrower entry
type: ObjectProperty
inverse of: has broader entry
definition: has a more specialized MVF entry than the subject

has semantic reference
type: DatatypeProperty
sub property of: hasTextValue
range: string
definition: has relevant reference that provides meaning but is not explicitly part of the vocabulary (i.e., document, web site, or other resource)
note: This property is string valued as the reference need not be dereferenceable at a URL.

has status
type: ObjectProperty
sub property of: classifies
range: term status
definition: associates a rating with respect to readiness or acceptability for usage with a vocabulary or MVF entry

hasTextualName
type: DatatypeProperty
deprecated: true
equivalent property: hasTextualName

hasURI
type: DatatypeProperty
deprecated: true
equivalent property: hasURL

has vocabulary entry
type: ObjectProperty
sub property of: hasMember
range: vocabulary entry
definition: has a designation (term) in this vocabulary

imports
type: ObjectProperty
sub property of: hasConstituent
definition: contains as an intrinsic part

is abbreviation
type: DatatypeProperty
domain: vocabulary entry
range: boolean
definition: whether the term for this vocabulary entry is an shortened form of another

is in vocabulary
type: ObjectProperty
sub property of: isMemberOf
range: vocabulary
definition: has containing vocabulary

is preferred
type: DatatypeProperty
range: boolean
definition: is the best term to use in the context of the vocabulary for some concept
note: The preferred flag is used to select a term (vocabulary entry) if there are multiple vocabulary entries (i.e., synonyms) available to map to a given model element in the current context.