Owl2Java, a code generator which produces Java code for the programmatic and transparent access to OWL ontologies, has been dormant for quite a while.
Dormant? How come?
Having handed in my PhD thesis my foray into the world of semantic web and programming per se has ended. Since autumn last year I am back in the field of real i.e. applied naval architecture and working in the industry time for further software development has been more than scarce.
So???
Well, over the last two or three years since the initial publication of Owl2Java and with no active development recently a sparse yet steady stream of mails regarding implementation details or limitations of the generator could be found in my inbox. Taking a request by some bloke named birchsport as incentive I started some quick research into the use this generator has seen. Well, I was surprised if not to say nonplussed 🙂
Owl2java has been mentioned in a bunch of papers as one possible means to interface to OWL ontologies from java code. ALso, it has been used
- to create an interface between ontologies and drools as shown in the Making norms concrete paper
- is used in the “Xmi2Owl” project in one way or the other, see here
Forks? Forks? Forks Anyone?
More surprisingly there are two maintained forks of my Owl2Java project where
1) the owl2java project on gitorious adds support for reification
2) while the other fork on github adds some tools to enrich an ontology’s structure by examining individuals
So check them out. Personally I doubt that my version will be see any further development in the near future.