Semantic Application Design Language (SADL) is an English-like

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

language for building formal models composed of an OWL ontology, rules expressed in terms of the

ontological Ontology is the philosophical study of being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every ...

concepts, queries for retrieving information from the model, and tests to validate and re-validate model content and

entailment Logical consequence (also entailment or logical implication) is a fundamental concept in logic which describes the relationship between statements that hold true when one statement logically ''follows from'' one or more statements. A valid l ...

s (implications). The SADL-IDE is an

Eclipse An eclipse is an astronomical event which occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ...

-based

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

(IDE) which facilitates authoring and maintaining models expressed in the SADL language.

Motivation

The Semantic Technology stack offers significant potential for knowledge capture and usage in many domains. However, native representations (OWL, SWRL,

Jena Jena (; ) is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in Germany and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 in ...

Rules,

SPARQL SPARQL (pronounced ":wikt:sparkle, sparkle", a recursive acronym for SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language) is an RDF query language—that is, a Semantic Query, semantic query language for databases—able to retrieve and manipulate data sto ...

) are unfriendly to domain experts who are not

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

s and not knowledgeable in the intricacies of

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

and

formal logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure o ...

. Furthermore, in the opinion of the creator, the tools available to build, test, maintain, and apply knowledge bases (models) over their life cycle are inadequate. SADL attempts to bridge these gaps.

How

SADL attempts to meet the needs identified above in several ways. The SADL grammar tries to use common words to express formal model relationships. These key words and phrases are mapped unambiguously into the formalisms of OWL, SWRL or Jena Rules, and SPARQL. SADL allows statement combinations for more concise and understandable groupings. Examples include listing the properties that "describe" a class as part of the class definition, identifying multiple subclasses in a single statement, chaining triple patterns in rules and queries to eliminate variables and make the overall pattern more readable, listing the attributes and relationships of an instance together with a single subject, and optionally named instances. The SADL-IDE provides templates, content assistance, quick fixes, hyper linking of concepts to their definitions, folding, and other aids to make it easier for domain experts to view and understand, create, and maintain models. The close integration of Eclipse with source code control systems such as CVS, SVN, or GIT allow SADL models to be versioned and more easily managed over their life cycle. The sequential nature of the language makes differences between model versions easy to compute and view. A set of models may be easily tagged as a particular release and retrieved as a compete set at any time. Integration of reasoners/rules engines with the SADL-IDE allows the model developer to exercise the model, query results and create test cases for validation and regression testing.

Sources

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References

SADL on SourceForge

TOWARD A UNIFIED ENGLISH-LIKE REPRESENTATION OF SEMANTIC MODELS, DATA, AND GRAPH PATTERNS FOR SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS
Semantic Web