Sean Bechhofer. The dig description logic interface: Dig/1.1. In Proceedings
of the 2003 Description Logic Workshop (DL 2003), 2003.
1 Introduction
Most description logic (DL) systems present the application programmer with a functional
interface, often defined using a Lisp-like syntax. Such interfaces may be more
or less complex, depending on the sophistication of the implemented system, and may
be more or less compliant with a specification such as KRSS [11].
The Lisp style of the KRSS syntax reflects the fact that Lisp is still the most common
implementation language for DLs. This can create considerable barriers to the
use of DL systems by application developers, who often prefer other languages (in
particular the currently ubiquitous Java), and who are becoming more accustomed to
component based software development environments. This is of increasing importance
given current interest in Web Services and service based architectures.
In such an environment, a DL might naturally be viewed as a self contained component,
with implementation details, and even the precise location in which its code is
being executed, being hidden from the application [3]. This approach has several advantages:
the issue of implementation language is finessed; the API can be defined in
some standard formalism intended for the purpose; a mechanism is provided for applications
to communicate with the DL