Help TOC > PLCS technical description > Reference Data > OWL - Web Ontology Language
OWL - Web Ontology Language Date: 2010/02/10 16:32:29
Revision: 1.13

This is a brief overview of the subset of the OWLWeb Ontology Language - A W3C recommendation http://www.w3.org/2004/OWL/for defining Ontologies (Class structures). language used for defining the PLCSProduct Life Cycle Support The project developing ISO 10303-239. The name of ISO 10303-239 (published by ISO in 2005). Reference DataReference Data is data that represents information about classes or individuals which are common to many users. Note: Reference Data provides a tailorable structured vocabulary that extends the PLCS information model with business specific semantics. and does not attempt to cover the entire language. OWL is an ontology modelling language layered over RDF (Resource Description Framework) that includes the following features:

OWL then pulls together the elements from these other W3CWorld Wide Web Consortium (http://www.w3.org) - The standards body for the web. standards and adds more powerful concepts for defining vocabularies, set theory concepts, individuals and the rest. Because of this layering, when written as RDF/XML the XML Namespaces associated with these other standards appear in OWL XML documents.

Which OWL level is used for PLCS Reference Data?

There are three kinds of OWL specified in the standard: OWL Lite, OWL DL and OWL Full. These allow levels of implementation and serve as a series of (what are essentially) "conformance class" for such implementations. OWL DL builds on OWL Lite, and OWL Full builds on OWL DL. PLCS has, because of practical considerations, elected to use OWL DL. The “DL” in OWL DL is “Description Logic”. There are reasoners and inference engines that understand DL but far fewer understand OWL Full. The software tools supporting OWL can report whether the ontology is DL or not.

OWL concepts

The core concepts in OWL used for specifying the PLCS Reference Data are:

NOTE    For more detailed descriptions please see

OWL Web Ontology Language Guide - Definitions(http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-guide-20040210/#BasicDefinitions)

How is OWL used to specify typical modelling concepts?

While OWL is similar in nature to other languages such as EXPRESS or UML, it has its own focus. Some of the concepts which modellers use in those languages are not available in OWL.

References

OWL Web Ontology Language Guide (http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-guide/)

OWL Web Ontology Language Reference Guide (http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref/)

OWL Web Ontology Language Overview (http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/)