How to impose the uniqueness of data property values via SHACL

Question

I cannot figure out how to impose the uniqueness of a data property value via SHACL.

The following excerpts are lite versions of the examples presented by Henriette Harmse in her personal blog.

Suppose we have the following data:

@prefix ex: <http://example.com/ns#> .
@prefix owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .
@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .

ex:Alice
    a ex:Person ;
    ex:ssn "987-65-4321" .
      
ex:Bob
    a ex:Person ;
    ex:ssn "987-65-4321" .

And below is the respective shape definition, which permits max 1 value for property ex:ssn and constraints its format:

@prefix dash: <http://datashapes.org/dash#> .
@prefix ex: <http://example.com/ns#> .
@prefix owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .
@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix sh: <http://www.w3.org/ns/shacl#> .
@prefix xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .

ex:PersonShape
    a sh:NodeShape ;
    sh:targetClass ex:Person ; 
    sh:property
        [
            sh:path ex:ssn ; 
            sh:maxCount 1 ;
            sh:datatype xsd:string ;
            sh:pattern "^\\d{3}-\\d{2}-\\d{4}$" ;
        ] .

The data above naturally conforms and no violations are reported. However, I would like to also impose an additional constraint that ssn numbers should be unique per person and that no two persons can share the same ssn number. In this case, the data would be invalid, since both ex:Alice and ex:Bob have the same ssn. How can this be expressed in SHACL?

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered May 31 '23 at 09:38

If your application is limited to SHACL Core and you can slightly relax the requirement to be global per-property and not specific to certain classes, you could use an inverse sh:maxCount 1 constraint on all objects of ex:ssn.

ex:ssnShape
    a sh:NodeShape ;
    sh:targetObjectsOf ex:ssn ;
    sh:property [
        sh:path [ sh:inversePath ex:ssn ] ;
        sh:maxCount 1 ;
    ] .

(Note: I have not tested this, but the intent is that for every distinct SSN it would check that there is at most one incoming link to it with the ex:ssn property walked in the inverse direction).

Really clever way to do this @Holger Knublauch many thanks for this! — Stratos K, Jul 14 '23 at 08:30

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered May 30 '23 at 21:10

Using the DASH constraint components library:

@prefix sh: <http://www.w3.org/ns/shacl#> .
@prefix dash: <http://datashapes.org/dash#> .
@prefix ex: <http://example.com/ns#> .
@prefix xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .

ex:PersonShape
    a sh:NodeShape ;
    sh:targetClass ex:Person ;
    sh:property [
        sh:path ex:ssn ;
        sh:datatype xsd:string ;
        sh:maxCount 1 ;
        dash:uniqueValueForClass ex:Person ;
    ] .

If DASH is not supported, use SPARQL-based constraint:

@prefix sh: <http://www.w3.org/ns/shacl#> .

ex:PersonShape
    a sh:NodeShape ;
    sh:targetClass ex:Person ;
    sh:sparql [
        sh:message "SSN is not unique" ;
        sh:select """
            PREFIX ex: <http://example.com/ns#> . 
            PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> 
            SELECT DISTINCT $this ?value ?other WHERE {
                $this ex:ssn ?value .
                ?other ex:ssn ?value .
                FILTER (?other != $this) .
                ?other a/rdfs:subClassOf* ex:Person .
            }
            """
    ]

Thanks for pointing me to DASH @Stanislav Kralin, and many thanks for the alternative solution as well, which works perfectly! — Stratos K, Jul 14 '23 at 08:33

How to impose the uniqueness of data property values via SHACL

2 Answers2