Introduction

OMG's Ontology Definition Metamodel (ODM) includes UML profiles for RDF and OWL, which provide a standard graphical notation for RDF vocabulary and OWL ontology development using UML tools.

Current Status

The ODM Beta 3 specification was formally adopted at the December 2008 OMG technical meeting. The formal ODM 1.0 specification, with contents relatively unchanged (aside from boilerplate material and elimination of change bars), will be posted on the OMG Specifications site in early 2009. ODM 1.0 supports the OWL 1.0 specifications.

A revision task force was convened in September 2008, and work on an ODM 1.1 revision is underway. Areas of anticipated change include minor modifications to the UML profiles for RDF and OWL, primarily with respect to property notation, and some revision to informative mapping chapters. These changes are anticipated to be completed for recommended adoption at the September 2009 OMG technical meeting, which will be held in San Antonio, Texas. The resulting ODM 1.1 specification will be submitted to ISO for standardization by the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC32 committee late next year. The revision task force encourages anyone working with the specification to submit issues, as needed, through the OMG issues process (see http://www.omg.org/technology/agreement.htm for Bug/Issue reporting details).

Support for OWL 2.0 will likely be provided through an ODM 1.2 revision task force, or potentially an ODM 2.0 specification, depending on the extent of the changes required, once the OWL 2 language itself becomes a W3C Recommendation.

In addition, a new Eclipse Model Development Tools (MDT) ODM project is in work. Our initial release, which will include all of the ODM metamodels, related profiles, and supporting Java APIs, are planned for inclusion in the Galileo release (June 2009) of the MDT project. Any interested developers are welcome to contact the project lead, Elisa Kendall (ekendall(at)sandsoft(dot)com), for details.

Examples

Some examples of OWL ontologies presented in this notation to go here please.

If possible, please use of the same ontology that is being used for comparison for [OwlCnl OWL CNL ] syntaxes - download CNL.owl from [1]

Details of this Notation

See Chapter 14 of the ODM, which includes detailed explanations, alternate graphical forms for a number of constructs, and a number of examples.

Relationship to UML

The profiles defined in the ODM are UML 2.1 compliant profiles. UML's profiling mechanism provides a standard way of extending UML; the approach taken in the ODM was partly inspired by recent development of a standard profile for systems modeling, SysML.

Implementations in UML tools

Tools that support RDF vocabulary and OWL ontology development using the ODM's UML profile include:

• Sandpiper Software's Visual Ontology Modeler
  • VOM v1.x is an add-in to IBM Rational Rose that supports forward and reverse engineering of OWL 1.0
  • VOM v2.x, currently in alpha testing, is an ODM and UML 2-compliant, Eclipse-based ontology development framework and plug-in to No Magic's MagicDraw UML development suite; integration with IBM Rational Software Modeler (RSA/RSM) and Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect (EA) tools are planned for 2009.
• IBM China Research

People who developed this notation

The UML profile for RDF and OWL was developed primarily by Conrad Bock (NIST), with support from Elisa Kendall (Sandpiper Software), and Evan Wallace (NIST).

Elisa Kendall and Chris Welty (IBM) edited the initial Ontology Definition Metamodel (ODM) specification as a whole, which was a collaborative effort by a number of OMG members with support of original WebOnt members in key technology areas. Subsequently, the finalization and revision task forces have been led by Roy Bell (Raytheon), Elisa Kendall, and Evan Wallace. Other major contributors to the UML profiles for RDF and OWL include Roger Burkhart (John Deere & Company), Mark Dutra (Sandpiper Software), Reg Ford (SRI), and David Martin (SRI).