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Planning to upgrade to version 4? List of changes that need to be made to migrate from versions 3.4 and 3.5 here.
The OWL API is a Java API for creating, parsing, manipulating and serialising OWL Ontologies. Version 3.1 and newer ones are designed for OWL 2
The OWL API is released under a dual license mode: LGPL and Apache. Both licenses are Open Source.
The following components are included:
- An API for OWL 2.
- an in-memory reference implementation for this API.
- RDF/XML, OWL/XML, OWL Functional Syntax, Manchester OWL Syntax, Turtle, KRSS and OBO Flat file parsers and renderers.
- Reasoner interfaces for external reasoners.
Reasoners known to support these interfaces are:
- FaCT++
- HermiT
- Pellet
- Racer
- JFact
- Chainsaw
The original version of the OWL API for OWL 1.0 was developed as part of the WonderWeb project.
Version 2.0.0 of the OWL API for was developed as part of the Co-ODE and TONES projects.
Version 3.0.0 was developed primarily at the University of Manchester.
More recent versions, starting with 3.3.0, are maintained by Matthew Horridge, currently in Stanford, and Ignazio Palmisano, currently a visiting fellow at Manchester University. Many contributions and bug fixes have also been provided by the OWL API users community, which can be found on the OWLAPI mailing list.
Other contributors include:
- Clark & Parsia LLC which contributed explanation and modularity code.
- University of Ulm which contributed KRSS2 syntax parser and renderer.
Version 4.0.0 is the next version of the OWL API, currently very much in flux in terms of features and design. If you fancy getting involved, or have dreams for great new features, or even if you are irked by some parts of the current design and wish to have your pain eased, you are welcome to propose them: fill in an issue or email the list with your proposal. Or, implement the change you would like to see in the API and issue a pull request.
https://github.com/owlcs/owlapi/wiki/_pages
The OWL API development is supported by various toolmakers:
YourKit is kindly supporting Open Source projects with its full-featured Java Profiler, and free licenses were provided to the OWL API developers. YourKit, LLC is the creator of innovative and intelligent tools for profiling Java and .NET applications.
Some of the OWL API developers are proud to use IntelliJ
... while others are happy with Eclipse.