CASE Bindings for C#

Generated bindings for version 1.3.0 of the CASE Ontology.

These bindings are write-only: they support creating a CASE-compliant RDF graph from scratch, but not editing or inspecting existing graphs.

Using the bindings

The entry point to the bindings is the CT.CASE.Bindings.DataSet class.

var ds = new DataSet();

The DataSet class exposes a factory method for each owl:Class in the ontology schema. The first parameter on each method is the IRI of the resulting RDF subject; pass null to generate a blank node instead. The remaining parameters map to the properties on the Thing being created.

Optional properties (those with sh:maxCount "1"^^xsd:integer) have a nullable type and default to null, which is taken to mean "no value." Repeated properties (those with no sh:maxCount constraint) have type IEnumerable<T> and also default to null, which is taken as equivalent to the empty Enumerable. Required properties (sh:minCount "1"^^xsd:integer) have no default and must be supplied; a null argument here will throw a NullArgumentException. Given the sheer number of parameters available on most factory methods, it is highly recommended to use C#'s named arguments syntax for the property arguments:

// investigation:Authorization defines four properties:
//     core:endTime (type xsd:dateTime, max count 1)
//     core:startTime (type xsd:dateTime, max count 1)
//     investigation:authorizationType (type xsd:string, max count 1)
//     investigation:authorizationIdentifier (type xsd:string, no max count)
// and inherits ten more from core:UcoObject, including
//     core:description (type xsd:string, no max count)
Authorization auth = ds.CreateAuthorization(
    /* RDF identifier */ UriFactory.Create("http://data.example/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"),
    authorizationType: "documentation",
    authorizationIdentifier: new string[] { "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" },
    description: new string[] { "Created as an example." }
);

The returned object acts as a strongly-typed wrapper around the RDF node and can be passed to subsequent factory methods to link nodes together.

// action:Action defines many properties, including
//     action:result (type core:UcoObject, which investigation:Authorization is a subClassOf)
Action authAction = ds.CreateAction(null, result: new UcoObject[] { auth });

RDF primitive types -- those in the xsd: namespace -- map to C# types according to the following table.

RDF type	C# type
xsd:anyURI	System.Uri
xsd:boolean	bool
xsd:byte	sbyte
xsd:dateTime	System.DateTime
xsd:decimal	decimal
xsd:duration	System.TimeSpan
xsd:hexBinary	byte[]
xsd:base64binary	byte[]
xsd:integer	long
xsd:nonNegativeInteger	NonNegativeInteger¹
xsd:positiveInteger	PositiveInteger¹
xsd:string	string
xsd:unsignedInt	uint
xsd:unsignedShort	ushort

¹ NonNegativeInteger and PositiveInteger are structs defined in this package as thin wrappers around System.Numeric.BigInteger with suitable bounds checks at runtime.

Open vocabularies map to classes with one public static readonly field per member defined in the schema. To create a nonstandard (xsd:string) value, use the public constructor.

// vocabulary:CharacterEncodingVocab is defined as (equivalent to either an xsd:string or) one of
//     "ASCII"^^vocabulary:CharacterEncodingVocab
//     "UTF-16"^^vocabulary:CharacterEncodingVocab
//     "UTF-32"^^vocabulary:CharacterEncodingVocab
//     "UTF-8"^^vocabulary:CharacterEncodingVocab
//     "Windows-1250"^^vocabulary:CharacterEncodingVocab
//     ...and so on...
CharacterEncodingVocab ascii = CharacterEncodingVocab.ASCII; // "ASCII"^^vocabulary:CharacterEncodingVocab
CharacterEncodingVocab custom = new CharacterEncodingVocab("Java-MUTF-8"); // "Java-MUTF-8"^^xsd:string

// The constructor doesn't check if you pass a lexical value that matches
// one of the well-known values. That is, this produces the literal node
// "ASCII"^^xsd:string, NOT "ASCII"^^vocabulary:CharacterEncodingVocab.
CharacterEncodingVocab likelyBug = new CharacterEncodingVocab("ASCII");

The generated graph is available through the Graph property on your DataSet and can be serialized using any of VDS.RDF's serialization mechanisms:

var rdfGraph = ds.Graph;
new VDS.RDF.Writing.CompressingTurtleWriter().Save(rdfGraph, myIoWriter);

Supported Versions

Bindings Version	CASE Version	.NET Version
0.1.0	1.0.0	Framework 4.7.2
0.2.0	1.0.0	Standard 2.0
0.3.0	1.1.0	Standard 2.0
0.4.0	1.2.0	Standard 2.0
0.5.0 (latest)	1.3.0	Standard 2.0

Known limitations

Properties with no declared target type are omitted from the bindings. As of CASE version 1.3.0, this only affects the following properties.

RDF class	Property path
action:ActionLifecycle	action:actionStatus
observable:WirelessNetworkConnectionFacet	observable:wirelessNetworkSecurityMode

The Thread class is intentionally unconstructable in this version of the bindings. It maps to the RDF class types:Thread, which is not a bag of properties in the sense of the rest of the classes in the schema, but rather a subClassOf co:Bag with unique semantics.