Core Concepts

Terms that you will frequently see in the BioBox platform and what they mean.

Concept

Concepts are the backbone of the ontology. They can be thought of as categories or labels for objects in the real-world. Using concepts, we can define a schema to model the real-world objects and how they relate to each in other. For example, the concept Gene can be defined as "unit of hereditary information encoded in a specific sequence of DNA (or RNA in some viruses) that determines a particular trait or function". The specific gene called BRCA1 is an object instance of the Gene concept. It is idempotent and represents a real-world entity, that is distinguishable from other Gene objects.

Relationship

Relationships describe how concepts are related to each other at a schema level. They are directed relationships with a defined start concept and end concepts. Instances of relationships exist between real objects in the graph. We can also encode data property values inside relationship instances (edges) as well, further enhancing the descriptiveness of the edge.

Object

Inside the BioBox platform, an object is a real-world data object that can be uniquely identified. It can belong to one or more concepts and can instantiate edges (relationship instances)