OWLAPY: A Pythonic Framework for OWL Ontology Engineering

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce OWLAPY, a comprehensive Python framework for OWL ontology engineering. OWLAPY streamlines the creation, modification, and serialization of OWL 2 ontologies. It uniquely integrates native Python-based reasoners with support for external Java reasoners, offering flexibility for users. OWLAPY facilitates multiple implementations of core ontology components and provides robust conversion capabilities between OWL class expressions and formats such as Description Logics, Manchester Syntax, and SPARQL. It also allows users to define custom workflows to leverage large language models (LLMs) in ontology generation from natural language text. OWLAPY serves as a well-tested software framework for users seeking a flexible Python library for advanced ontology engineering, including those transitioning from Java-based environments. The project is publicly available on GitHub at https://github.com/dice-group/owlapy and on the Python Package Index (PyPI) at https://pypi.org/project/owlapy/ , with over 50,000 downloads at the time of writing.