/
Migrate to Scala & OWLAPI

Migrate to Scala & OWLAPI

At this point in time (February '17), the rdf-toolkit has only one function: to "serialize" RDF files. We need to support this function also in the new version that we're going to develop but will move that under the serialize command.

The initial version of the Serializer was built by jacobus.geluk@gmail.com [X] using Scala as the programming language and the OWLAPI as the toolkit that does the actual work. However, before that version was finalized, Anthony Coates happened to have more time available to work on it and we decided that it was more practical to use Sesame (called RDF4J nowadays) rather than the OWLAPI since we didn't need the OWLAPI for pure RDF-file rewriting. And it was decided to use Java as the programming language instead.

However, we now have to extend the rdf-toolkit with the build command which requires the use of the OWLAPI since we need to be able to rewrite all Ontology IRIs and Ontology Version IRIs, check the import closure, add annotations and so forth. So we have to look back at the "old" OWLAPI version again, which was written in Scala.

Since the OWLAPI is a very complex API we'd prefer to use Scala so that we can simplify things and have a more maintainable tool. It also helps that we have several volunteerd available who'd prefer Scala as well.

One first thing that needs to be done is to create a new Command Line Interface that moves the current command line options for the Serializer under the serialize command and allows for all the new features of "the builder".