Protege API

Description Features Architecture Disadvantages Comparison with other APIs Code Example

Description

The Protégé-OWL API is an open-source Java library for the Web Ontology Language and RDF(S).

The API provides classes and methods to load and save OWL files, to query and manipulate OWL data models, and to perform reasoning.

Protégé ontology development platform can be extended by way of a plug-in architecture and Java-based Application Programming Interface (API) for building knowledge-based tools and applications.

Features

Provided with the standard Protege installation.

Has good compatibility with Protege.

You can edit ontologies , access description logic DL reasoners.

For example, we can create new classes and instances programmatically.

Furthermore, the API is optimized for the implementation of graphical user interfaces.

Like other Java APIs, the libraries are needed to be imported in the source code of the application.

The Protege OWL API seems to sit on top of JENA API however it uses Jena only for parsing and provides a Jena view.

By basing the OWL Plugin on top of Protege, we could also reuse Protege's client-server based multi-user mode that allows multiple people to edit the same ontology at the same time .

Users' opinionsPROTEGE API OWL API JENA API

* extension of the OWL API The OWL API bypasses RDF to provide services based on OWL.

Most Flexible oneas it covers all of RDF and therefore can be used to create OWL constructs, axioms and run inferences.

It is good for newcomers. It is not RDF-friendly and you won't be applying SPARQL queries any time soon.

Jena is a general purpose RDF API (that means RDF data, not just ontologies) plus an OWL API, plus SPARQL processor, reasoningsupport, pluggable database backends and various assorted external tools

* uses some Jena features. Protégé-OWL has always had a close relationship with Jena.

The latest version of the API is focused towards

Code Examples

Resources

http://protege.stanford.edu/plugins/owl/api/

http://wiki.unik.no/index.php/Courses/4710JavaCommunity

”The Protege OWL Plugin:An Open Development Environment for Semantic Web Applications”,Holger Knublauch, Ray W. Fergerson, Natalya F. Noy, and Mark A. Musen