Universal Framework for OWL2 Ontology Transformations

Domain ontologies are valuable knowledge assets with many potential applications, e.g. in software engineering. Their content is often a subject of bi-directional transformations. Unfortunately, a centralized transformation service which can be easily extended with new mappers is not available for ontology users. In consequence, they have to deal with many different translation programs, which have to be installed and learned separately. The paper presents a framework for universal ontology processing, dedicated to ontologies expressed in OWL2. The framework usefulness was verified by a proof-of-concept implementation, for which an existing OWL2 to Groovy translator was adapted. During the integration process, the translator functionality was enhanced with ontology individuals mapping. The exemplary implementation confirmed that the framework with plug-in architecture is flexible and easy for customization. The ontology stakeholders should benefit from the reduced cognitive load and more satisfying transformation process.