The Protégé-OWL Short Course provides an introduction to ontology development in OWL, both from a theoretical standpoint and from a practical standpoint through hands-on use of the Protégé platform. The course also emphasizes how to use OWL ontologies, and other semantic technologies like SWRL, to build semantic applications with examples from real-world use cases.

DAY 1 (Monday):

On the first day of the course during the Ontology 101 lecture, we:

• define ontologies
• talk about why you might want to build one
• outline the steps in the development process
• list common development pitfalls and give tips for avoiding them

Right after lunch we introduce the Semantic Web and dive into hands-on use of the Protégé-OWL editor to facilitate understanding of basic OWL topics such as:

• classes, properties, and individuals
• class and property axioms
• reasoning

DAY 2 (Tuesday):

The majority of the second day is again hands-on and focuses on advanced OWL and reasoning topics such as:

• more on properties (inverse, functional, transitive, symmetric)
• domain and range
• union, intersection, negation
• existential, universal, and cardinality restrictions
• multiple inheritance
• necessary and sufficient conditions
• closure axioms
• open world vs. closed world assumption
• value partitions
• OWL modeling patterns (best practices)

In the late afternoon, we switch gears to cover a number of Protégé extensions that assist users with various tasks in the lifecycle of ontology development. Attendees will be introduced to:

• alternative methods of visualizing ontologies
• working in client-server mode
• tracking ontology changes
• developing ontologies in a collaborative environment
• ontology merging and mapping

DAY 3 (Wednesday):

Hands-on work resumes on the morning of the third day with a session on the Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL). Attendees will gain experience with the SWRLTab, which is an environment within the Protégé-OWL editor that allows for graphical creation, editing, and execution of SWRL rules.

Following the SWRL session is an overview of how one goes about building applications with, or developing plugins for Protégé. This is a high-level lecture that is *not* targeted towards software developers. Rather, we want attendees to come away with an understanding of what is possible in terms of extending the Protégé platform to meet individual workflow needs.

After lunch, attendees will have the chance to hear lectures from two research scientists currently working in the BMIR department about how they have used Protégé, ontologies, and OWL in real world applications.

Last but certainly not least, we will give a demo of the next-generation Protégé-OWL editor (Protégé 4.0 Alpha) and discuss what is coming in the OWL 1.1 specification.