Ontology Read Introduction

The Ontology Read service is used to query OWL ontologies. All kinds of information can be read from the specified ontology such as classes, object properties, datatype properties, annotation properties and individuals. Reasoners can also be used to include inferred facts in the service's resultset. A full list of actions can be performed that enables you to leverage your ontologies, properly and effectively.

This Web service is a wrapper over the OWLAPI ontology library. Most of the API has been implemented. Essentially, this service (along with its other related services) turns the OWLAPI into a Web service API.

Developers communicate with the Ontology Read Web service using the HTTP POST method. You may request one of the following mime types: (1) text/xml, (2) application/rdf+xml, (3) application/rdf+n3 or (4) application/json. The content returned by the Web service is serialized using the mime type requested and the data returned depends on the parameters selected.