The Duality of Attributes and Entities

Entities, attributes, and attribute values are the components of semantic nets. (Semantic Nets are described in detail in the Semantic Nets section of Appendix 1.)

The relationships between these three components are shown in the diagram below. They illustrate how entities and attributes may occur recursively, in each cycle incorporating greater and greater amounts of detail about the "highest level" entity being described.

Thus an attribute of an entity that exists "above" the attribute in the semantic net can also be seen as an entity which other attributes describe. We call this "the duality of entities and attributes".

Recognition of this duality is fundamental to understanding the design of LegendBurster's Ontology Editor, and hence to its representation of knowledge.

A full discussion of how these concepts relate to knowledge bases and databases is presented in Appendix 1, starting with the section on "Knowledge Bases".