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## Package org.semanticweb.owl.inference

Inference over OWL ontologies.

See:
Description

Interface Summary
OWLClassReasoner | A reasoner that provides reasoning over OWL classes.
OWLConsistencyChecker | An OWL consistency checker.
OWLIndividualReasoner | A Reasoner for OWL Individuals.
OWLReasoner | A Reasoner for OWL ontologies.
OWLTaxonomyReasoner | A Taxonomy Reasoner for OWL ontologies.

## Package org.semanticweb.owl.inference Description

Inference over OWL ontologies.
© The University of Manchester, 2002.

## Package Specification

This package provides a collection of interface definitions that support inference over OWL ontologies. The basic strategy taken in the API is that the org.semanticweb.owl.model package provides access to the data asserted within an OWL ontology, while this package supports basic inference over the ontologies.

The separation makes it clear exactly what kind of information we are dealing with (assertions vs. inferences) and also allows implementors to build representations of OWL ontologies without necessarily committing to implementing inference.

There are a number of different reasoning interfaces, each of which characterizes a different kind of task. To a certain extent this is an artificial distinction as nearly all the tasks that we wish to perform (e.g. subsumption reasoning and given the presence of the `one-of` operator, individual reasoning) can be couched in terms of a consistency test.

Implementations of the interface may only be able to reason with subspecies of the language. If a reasoner is asked to reason with an ontology outside its remit, an exception may be raised. This may occur either through an explicit setting of the ontology, or through a manipulation or edit of the ontology that the reasoner has been told to reason about.

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