OWLOOP: A Modular API to Describe OWL Axioms in OOP Objects Hierarchies

TL;DR

OWLOOP introduces a modular API that bridges OWL ontologies with object-oriented programming, reducing boilerplate code and improving integration for knowledge-based software architectures.

Contribution

It extends the OWL-API to enable seamless interaction between OWL axioms and OOP object hierarchies, enhancing modularity and computational efficiency.

Findings

Reduces boilerplate code in OWL-OOP integration

Facilitates modular architecture design with OWL ontologies

Improves computational handling of OWL axioms in OOP environments

Abstract

OWLOOP is an Application Programming Interface (API) for using the Ontology Web Language (OWL) by the means of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). It is common to design software architectures using the OOP paradigm for increasing their modularity. If the components of an architecture also exploit OWL ontologies for knowledge representation and reasoning, they would require to be interfaced with OWL axioms. Since OWL does not adhere to the OOP paradigm, such an interface often leads to boilerplate code affecting modularity, and OWLOOP is designed to address this issue as well as the associated computational aspects. We present an extension of the OWL-API to provide a general-purpose interface between OWL axioms subject to reasoning and modular OOP objects hierarchies.