Technical note | Testing the Shapes Vector derived UniSec Ontology in OWL using Protégé and Pellet

ABSTRACT

This document describes the details of implementing the UniSec ontology in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) using the Protégé ontology development tool, and testing it with the Pellet reasoning engine to evaluate its usefulness

 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Shapes Vector project is well into its second decade. The framework uses an ontology design that, while state-of-the-art at the time, does not feature some concepts that have been developed in various research communities since its inception. It is also proprietary in its implementation, which means that it cannot make direct use of many recent, readily available tools that could supplement its capabilities and contribute to its wider adoption.

This project investigates whether a current ontology standard, such as OWL, and the many tools developed for its use, can provide Shapes Vector with further reasoning capability. Such ability is meant to be provided in an "add-on" fashion: the Shapes Vector framework will remain the processing workhorse for input handling and much of the reasoning, except in those cases where it does not provide the necessary capability. In those instances, the existing ontology will be exported to OWL, reasoned with, then imported back into SV for further processing, if necessary.