What is the Fact Hierarchy?

The Fact Hierarchy panel lists all the facts present in the current ontology. Facts can be related to other facts by inheritence, whereby a 'Child' fact will inherit the attributes of its 'Parent'.

Note that the fact hierarchy is based on single inheritence, i.e. each child has just one parent, although each parent can have multiple children. As parents are themselves children they will have inherited attributes from their own parents.

The hierarchy of Parents and Children is represented as a tree using the following icons:

the closed folder represents a Parent whose children are not currently shown on screen. This saves space, and is the default state for all parent facts. To show the children - click on the "+" icon, or double-click on the fact's name.

the open folder depicts a Parent whose Children are shown underneath. To hide the children click on the "-" icon, or double-click on the fact's name.

a cloud is used to depict a Child fact: these are facts that have not (yet) been used to define other facts.

Clicking on a Parent or a Child fact will cause its attributes to be displayed in the Attribute Table panel below.


Related Topics

  1. Creating New Facts
  2. What is an Ontology?
  3. What is an Attribute?