ONTOTRACK: Combining Browsing and Editing with Reasoning and Explaining for OWL Lite Ontologies

Abstract

ONTOTRACK is a new browsing and editing "in-one-view" ontology authoring tool that combines a hierarchical graphical layout and instant reasoning feedback for (the most rational fraction of) OWL Lite. ONTOTRACK provides an animated and zoomable view with context sensitive features like click-able miniature branches or selective detail views together with drag-and-drop editing. Each editing step is instantly synchronized with an external reasoner in order to provide appropriate graphical feedback about relevant modeling consequences. The most recent feature of ONTOTRACK is an on demand textual explanation for subsumption and equivalence between or unsatisfiability of classes. This paper describes the key features of the current implementation and discusses future work as well as some development issues. © Springer-Verlag 2004.