Description logic is a sublanguage of owl full which restricts the. A w3c semantic web language designed to represent rich and complex knowledge about things, groups of things, and relations between things. An owl ontology describes a domain in terms of classes, properties and individuals and may include rich descriptions of the characteristics of those objects. The making of a web ontology language ian horrocks,1 peter f. Already in the first sentence of the owl recommendation it is stated that the owl web ontology language is designed for use by applications that need to process the content of information instead of just presenting information to humans 9. Preface to v1 this book is my attempt at providing the rst textbook for an introduction in on tology engineering. Owl 2 web ontology language primer world wide web consortium. The web ontology language owl 3 developed by the world wide web consortium w3c is the most. This book provides an excellent overview on the technologies for building the semantic. The owl web ontology language test cases document contains a large set of test cases for. Representing information using the web ontology language pdf. Chapter 2 an introduction to the owl web ontology language. The owl semantics and abstract syntax document is the final and formally stated normative definition of the language. The w3c web ontology language owl is a semantic web language designed to represent rich and complex knowledge about things, groups of things, and relations between things.
As such, it was designed to be compatible with the extensible markup language xml as well as other w3c standards. Of course, the uris of the defined ontologies will not usually be references. Web ontology language owl semantics for example, we can state in our ontology. Owl s is based on ontologies of objects and concepts defined using the ontology web language owl. This document is also available in these nonnormative formats. Web ontology language ontologies in computer science are based on formal logic with wellfounded semantics. Although the character owl from winnie the pooh wrote his name wol, the acronym owl was proposed without reference to that character, as an easily pronounced acronym that would yield good logos, suggest wisdom, and honor william a. The owl 2 web ontology language, informally owl 2, is an. Pdf owl web ontology language reference ian horrocks.
It includes detailed information about structure, content and use of owl reference sets. It is a stable document and may be used as reference material or cited. An ontology language is a formal language used to encode the ontology. The ontology web language owl is a set of markup languages which are designed for use by applications that need to process the content of information instead of just presenting information to humans the owl ontology describe the hierarchical organization of ideas in a domain, in a way that can be parsed and understood by software. Since there are as yet very few owl query languages, and since every. A modeltheoretic semantics is given to provide a formal meaning for owl ontologies written in this abstract syntax. This chapter describes concepts related to the support for a subset of the web ontology language owl. It is one of the core semantic web standards you must be familiar with, along with rdf and sparql. Patelschneider,2 and frank van harmelen3 1 department of computer science university of manchester oxford road, manchester m 9pl, uk email. Owl web ontology language semantics and abstract syntax. The key references for owl at the date of writing, april 2003. In particular, the formal specification of the language was influ enced by description logics, the surface structure of the language as seen in the abstract syntax. The ontology web language owl is a set of markup languages which are designed for use by applications that need to process the content of information instead of just presenting information to humans.
The language is typically a naturallanguage image of a formal system, such as predicate logic in 4 or owl web ontology language 5 in 6. The w3c owl 2 web ontology language owl is a semantic web. Pdf owl web ontology language reference researchgate. In this chapter we analyse the limitations of rdf schema and derive requirements for a richer web ontology language. Owl 2 ontologies can be used along with information written in rdf, and owl 2 ontologies.
Web ontology language wikipedia republished wiki 2. University of dublin trinity college introduction to web ontology language owl owen. It builds on the information in chapter 1, and it assumes that you are familiar with the major concepts associated with owl, such as ontologies, properties, and relationships. Owl 2 ontologies provide classes, properties, individuals, and data values and are stored as semantic web documents. It is intended to facilitate interpretability among web content using vocabulary and formatting that allows automatic machine processing. Types of languages cycl cycl is used to represent the knowledge stored in the cyc. Web ontology language owl world wide web consortium. Indeed, there are books about ontology engineering, but they. Owl 2 web ontology language document overview second edition.
The ontology web language for services owl s is a core set of markup language constructs for describing the properties and capabilities of web services in unambiguous, computerinterpretable form. The owl web ontology language is designed for use by applications that need. In order to regain computational e ciency, owl dl short for. This document contains several interrelated normative specifications of the several styles of owl, the web ontology language being produced by the w3c web ontology working group webont. Web ontology language the web ontology language owl is a language for defining ontologies on the web. Owl 10 is a new ontology language for the semantic web, developed by the world wide web consortium w3c web ontology working group. It became a world wide web consortium w3c recommendation 1 in february 2004. An ontology document defines the terms used to describe and represent a domain. The owl reference gives a systematic and compact but still informally stated description of all the modelling primitives of owl. The web ontology language owl 6 is a family of knowledge representation languages for authoring ontologies and endorsed by the world wide web consortium. We then describe the threelayered architecture of the owl language, and we describe all of the language constructs of owl in some detail. Owl web ontology language guide world wide web consortium.
Ontologies are a formal way to describe taxonomies and classification networks, essentially defining the structure of knowledge for various domains. Dec 18, 2018 much of foodons vocabulary comes from transforming langual, a mature and popular food indexing thesaurus, into a world wide web consortium w3c owl web ontology languageformatted vocabulary. This document is a guide to the use of the ontology web language owl in snomed ct. In particular, owl extends the resource description framework rdf and rdf schema, two early semantic web.
Pdf owl web ontology languageoverview researchgate. Nov 12, 2009 this description of owl, the web ontology language being designed by the w3c web ontology working group, contains a highlevel abstract syntax for both owl dl and owl lite, sublanguages of owl. Apr 14, 2016 w3c recommendation, february 2004 web standard web ontology language built on top of rdf rdf. The final goal of the semantic web is a web in which machines can understand the content of the. Owl, api, java, reasoning, application development 1. Citeseerx citation query owl web ontology language reference. Pdf on jan 1, 2004, mcguinness and others published owl web ontology languageoverview find, read and cite all the research you need on.
If these web sites share and publish the same underlying ontology of the terms they all use, then computer agents can extract and aggregate information from these different sites. Is a description of concepts and relationships that can be used by people or software agents that want to share information within a domain. A framework for using reference ontologies as a foundation. The chapter concludes with two extensive examples of owl ontologies. One of the main tools for this is owl, an ontology computer language. Mcguinness and f van harmelen eds owl web ontology language overview. Oct 21, 20 abstract the web ontology language owl is a semantic markup language for publishing and sharing ontologies on the world wide web. Fast and flexible data modeling efficient automated reasoning this lesson gives a high level introduction to. Since we are designing this system to be part of the semantic web we assume that reference ontology r is either directly represented in a semantic web language such as rdfs or owl or can be converted by wrapper w to appear as rdfsowl. In this paper we describe racer, which can be considered as a core inference engine for the semantic web.
Martins one world language knowledge representation project from the 1970s. Pdf the web ontology language owl is a semantic markup language for publishing and sharing ontologies on the world wide web. The web ontology language owl the rapid evolution of semantic web ontology languages was enabled by learning from the experiences in developing existing knowledge representation formalisms and database conceptual models, and by inheriting and extending some of their useful features. Owl web ontology language adelia gouveia and jorge cardoso. First, section 2 contains a highlevel, abstract syntax for both owl lite, a subset of owl, and owl dl, a fuller style of using owl but one that still places some limitations on how owl ontologies are constructed. This description of owl, the web ontology language being designed by the w3c web ontology working group, contains a highlevel abstract syntax for both owl dl and owl lite, sublanguages of owl. This is especially important in regards to the web because it offers the hope of organizing the web by meanings, not just by matching strings of characters. The aim of this chapter is to present the web ontology language owl which can be used to develop semantic web applications that understand information and data on the web. Enables subsumption subclassof relations to be computed tractable inference algorithms owl web ontology language an ontology language for the semantic web w3c standard. This language was proposed by the w3c and was designed for publishing, sharing data and automating data understood by computers using ontologies. Owls is based on ontologies of objects and concepts defined using the ontology web languageowl. The reference implementation of the owl api, written in java, includes validators for the various owl 2 pro. The owl api has widespread usage in a variety of tools and applications.
This book introduces the subject of ontology, owl, and shows how it can revolutionize the way we use computers. The web ontology language owl is a semantic markup language for publishing and sharing ontologies on the world wide web. Web ontology language often stylized as owl is a semantic web language that is designed to process and integrate information over the web, making sense of it in a manner similar to human reasoning. Abstract the web ontology language owl is a semantic markup language for publishing and sharing ontologies on the world wide web.
These owl reference sets are used to distribute ontology reference information and the axioms that represent the formal logical definitions of snomed ct concepts. The ontology web language for services owls is a core set of markup language constructs for describing the properties and capabilities of web services in unambiguous, computerinterpretable form. Creating ontologies information in owl is generally in an ontology. Owl is a computational logicbased language such that knowledge expressed in owl can be exploited by computer programs, e. Owl was primarily designed to represent information about categories of objects and how objects are interrelatedthe. The web ontology language owl is a semantic markup language for. In encyclopedia of information science and technology, information science reference, pennsylvania, usa, 2007. Much of foodons vocabulary comes from transforming langual, a mature and popular food indexing thesaurus, into a world wide web consortium w3c owl web ontology languageformatted vocabulary. This document contains a structured informal description of the full set of. Rif7 is a standard rules languages for the semantic web. Exercise \\pageindex\ install your ode of choice, if not already done so, and acquaint yourself with the software. Owl web ontology language fact inference algorithm.
Ebiquity research group semantic web reference card v2. W3c recommendation, february 2004 web standard web ontology language built on top of rdf rdf. Description logic an important element of the semantic web has a welldefined semantics. Owl 101 introduction owl or web ontology language is the ontology think schema language of the semantic web. Owl 5 the disadvantage of owl full is the language has become so powerful as to be undecidable, dashing any hope of complete let alone e cient reasoning support. Dec 11, 2012 the owl 2 web ontology language, informally owl 2, is an ontology language for the semantic web with formally defined meaning. Owl has more facilities for expressing meaning and semantics. The ontologies on the web range from large taxonomies categorizing web sites such as on yahoo. Introduction the web ontology language owl has been a w3c. Although already recognisable as an ontology language, the capabilities of rdf are rather limited. Owl was primarily designed to represent information about categories of objects and how objects are interrelatedthe sort of information that is often called an ontology. The formalism to represent ontologies such as the web ontology language owl wc12 is what many people associate with ontologies today. The natural acronym for web ontology language would be wol instead of owl. Owl 2 web ontology language quick reference guide second.
For example, suppose several different web sites contain medical information or provide medical ecommerce services. For many ontology projects, owl is the formal language of choice, and owl is indeed something like an emerging standard in applied ontology. The web ontology language owl is a family of knowledge representation languages for authoring ontologies. The web ontology language owl is a language for defining ontologies on the web. This makes this syntax already significantly easier to read by humans.