Monday, 5/21/2007
1:15 PM - 4:45 PM
Level: Technical - Intermediate

The WonderWeb OWL API [1] provides programmatic support for applications
that wish to consume and produce ontologies represented using the Web
Ontology Language OWL. The API is primarily targeted at those who wish to
work with the OWL DL language fragment, and provides a level of abstraction
above the XML/RDF syntax that is commonly used for exchange. Support is also
provided for Description Logic reasoning. The API provides the core data
structures for a number of Semantic Web tools, most notably the Protege and
SWOOP editors.

The tutorial will provide an overview of the API, discussing the motivation
and rationale for design decisions made, and will give some examples of its
usage.

We assume some familiarity with semantic web technologies. The API has been
developed using Java -- some familiarity with Java and associated
technologies is thus expected.

Sean Bechhofer is a Lecturer in the Information Management Group of the
University of Manchester, having spent the period from 1993 to
2004 as a Research Fellow. Over the last ten years, he has worked on tools
and infrastructure to support the use of Semantic Web technology. He was
primarily responsible for the development of OilEd, one of the first
ontology development tools to utilise DL style reasoning. He was a
participant in the W3C WebOnt Ontology Language Working Group, providing an
implementation of one of a validating parser for OWL along with supporting
infrastructure for the use of OWL in applications. He also led work on the
development of the DIG standardised interface to Description Logic
reasoners.