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 the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
language for building formal models composed of an
OWL ontology, rules expressed in terms of the
ontological concepts, queries for retrieving information from the model, and tests to validate and re-validate model content and
entailments (implications).
The SADL-IDE is an
Eclipse
An eclipse is an astronomical event that 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 ce ...
-based
integrated development environment(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 Rules,
SPARQL) are unfriendly to domain experts who are not
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...
s and not knowledgeable in the intricacies of
artificial intelligence and
formal logic. 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.
{{citation needed, date=May 2012
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
CVS may refer to:
Organizations
* CVS Health, a US pharmacy chain
** CVS Pharmacy
** CVS Caremark, a prescription benefit management subsidiary
* Council for Voluntary Service, England
* Cable Video Store, former US pay-per-view service
* CVS F ...
, 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.
References
SADL on SourceForgeTOWARD A UNIFIED ENGLISH-LIKE REPRESENTATION OF SEMANTIC MODELS, DATA, AND GRAPH PATTERNS FOR SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS
Semantic Web