A question the graph answers is declared, and walked

Answers Ontology · Topology · Epistemology

The graph exists to answer questions, and the questions are declared. Each is a competency question stated in words, with the chain of relationships that answers it named kind to kind, walked forward or in reverse. The build walks every declared chain end to end through the rows and refuses one nothing travels; and every kind lies on at least one declared question, so the graph holds nothing no question needs. A pattern may walk a typing like any other relationship, because what a thing is typed by is part of the answer and may itself be typed; it never walks a grounding, which says only that a kind exists, and the build refuses one that tries.

What goes wrong without it

An ontology is built to answer questions, and the ontology-design literature evaluates one by whether it can: competency questions are stated first, and completeness is read against them. A knowledge graph that publishes its kinds and relationships but not the questions they exist to answer asks a reader to infer its purpose from its shape, and lets a kind survive that no question needs. Declaring the questions makes the purpose a fact the build can test, and makes every kind account for itself by naming a question it lies on.

What proves it — 1

Each is a gate the build runs: a check inside a ring, a whole ring, or an eval beside them. A build stops at the first that refuses.

• Every pattern is a shape the model can hold, and every kind is in onePattern integrity
  Every pattern's roles name kinds that exist and are named once; every edge is a declared relationship whose ends are its roles' kinds; the shape is connected and crosses no grounding, and a typing only where nothing leads on; a root, where declared, is the first role. A pattern with a root binds from some row, and every kind fills a role in some pattern.

Derived from — 4

• Grüninger and Fox, IJCAI-95 Workshop on Basic Ontological Issues in Knowledge Sharing, 1995Methodology for the Design and Evaluation of Ontologies
• Uschold and Gruninger, The Knowledge Engineering Review 11(2), 1996Ontologies: Principles, Methods and Applications
• W3CShapes Constraint Language (SHACL)
• W3CSPARQL 1.1 Query Language, Property Paths

Where this model stands

The declared questions cover every kind, from how a goal is evidenced to which window a journey counts inactivity over, and each is rendered as a page that reads its chain as a sentence, states how many rows each hop reaches, and shows one worked path through the rows.

A question's chain is compiled by the same walker the check uses, so the page cannot describe a path the build did not prove.

Two paths once kept as constants in the build, consumer evidence and goal to metric, are declared questions now, where a maintainer would look and a reader can read them.

What it does not claim

A question is a chain, not a tree: where an answer branches, two questions are declared. A declared branch would need a shape richer than a chain, and nothing yet needs one.

RUL-026