Summary
In order to extend the limited expressiveness of RDF Schema, a more expressive Web Ontology Language (OWL) has been defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). In this chapter we analyse the limitations of RDF Schema and derive requirements for a richer Web Ontology Language. We then describe the three-layered architecture of the OWL language, and we describe all of the language constructs of OWL in some detail. The chapter concludes with two extensive examples of OWL ontologies.
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References
The key references for OWL (at the date of writing, April 2003)
D. McGuinness and F van Harmelen (eds) OWL Web Ontology Language Overview http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-owl-features-20030331/
M. Dean, G. Schreiber (eds), E. van Harmelen, J. Hendler, I. Horrocks, D. McGuinness, P. Patel-Schneider, L. Stein, OWL Web Ontology Language Reference http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-owl-ref-20030331/
M. Smith, C. Welty, D. McGuinness, OWL Web Ontology Language Guide http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-owl-guide-20030331/
P. Patel-Schneider, P. Hayes, I. Horrocks, OWL Web Ontology Language Semantics and Abstract Syntax http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-owl-semantics-20030331/
J. Hefflin, Web Ontology Language (OWL) Use Cases and Requirements http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-webont-req-20030331/
Further interesting articles related to DAML+OIL and OIL include
J. Broekstra et al. Enabling knowledge representation on the Web by Extending RDF Schema. In Proc. 10th World Wide Web Conference (WWW’10), 2001.
D. Fensel et al. OIL: An Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IEEE Intelligent Systems 16, 2 (2001).
D. McGuinness. Ontologies come of age. In D. Fensel et al. (eds): The Semantic Web: Why, What, and How. MIT Press 2002.
P. Patel-Schneider, I. Horrocks, F. van Harmelen, Reviewing the Design of DAML+OIL: An Ontology Language for the Semantic Web, Proceedings of AAAI’02.
There is a number of interesting Web sites. A key site is
On OWL: http: //www.w3.org/2001/sw/WebOnt/
On its precursor DAML+OIL: ht tp://www. daml. org Interesting subpages include: a) http://www.daml.org/language b) http://www.daml.org/ontologies c) http://www.daml.org/tools
The two most relevant chapters from this Handbook are
B. McBride, The Resource Description Framework (RDF) and its Vocabulary Description Language RDFS, in: The Handbook on Ontologies in Information Systems, S. Staab, R. Studer (eds.), Springer Verlag, 2003.
F. Baader, I. Horrocks and U. Sattler, Description Logics, in: The Handbook on Ontologies in Information Systems, S. Staab, R. Studer (eds.), Springer Verlag, 2003.
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© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Antoniou, G., van Harmelen, F. (2004). Web Ontology Language: OWL. In: Staab, S., Studer, R. (eds) Handbook on Ontologies. International Handbooks on Information Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24750-0_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24750-0_4
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