Abox

In Computer Science, an ABox is an "assertion component"—a fact associated with a terminological vocabulary within a knowledge base.

The terms ABox and TBox are used to describe two different types of statements in ontologies. TBox statements describe a system in terms of controlled vocabularies, for example, a set of classes and properties. ABox are TBox-compliant statements about that vocabulary.

TBox statements are sometimes associated with object-oriented classes and ABox statements associated with instances of those classes.

Together ABox and TBox statements make up a knowledge base.

Examples of ABox and TBox statements

ABox statements typically have the form:

or

This should be contrasted with TBox statements or (statements) about terminology such as:

or

TBox statements tend to be more permanent within a knowledge base and tend to be stored in a data model or a metadata registry. In contrast, ABox statements are much more dynamic in nature and tend to be stored as instance data within transactional systems within databases.

Railbox

RailBox Company (reporting marks ABOX, RBOX, TBOX, FBOX), founded in 1974, was created to address a boxcar shortage in the United States in the 1970s.

The concept behind RailBox, as evidenced by their slogan "Next Load, Any Road!" was that since Railbox was owned by many of the railroads as a privately owned cooperative, their boxcars were not subject to load/empty rules. Railbox cars could be assigned for service anywhere in Canada, Mexico and the United States on lines where an AAR Plate-C loading gauge is permitted. Railbox purchased boxcars from many Manufacturers including American Car and Foundry (ACF), Farmers Machinery Company (FMC), and Pullman-Standard (P-S).

Under the ICC car routing rules in effect at the time, cars owned by operating companies were supposed to be routed back to their owning road as soon as possible or the host road would have to pay demurrage(car storage and handling) charges. This was the cause a shortage of available cars and not an actual shortage of boxcars numerically. As empty cars were required to be routed back to their home railroad instead of being loaded and routed to another destination.