A Semantic Web Primer for Object-Oriented Software Developers

Domain models play a central role throughout the software development cycle, from requirements analysis to design, through implementation and beyond. As such, great progress has been made in the consistent use of models throughout this process. Modern software development tools with support for the UML and code generation as well as Model-Driven Architectures allow for developers to synchronize and verify technical implementation with user requirements using models. However, the reusability of domain models is often limited because they are, by definition, domain specific and only take into consideration abstractions needed to make possible a solution within the confines of their own individual problem space. But the Web is broader than that and provides a multidimensional solution space capable of referencing an almost limitless set of domains. While much of our software becomes increasingly embedded in the Web, our development processes do not fully exploit the potential of model reuse from the Web yet. This note therefore introduces Semantic Web languages such as RDF Schema and OWL, and shows how they can be used in tandem with mainstream object-oriented languages. We show that the Semantic Web can serve as a platform on which domain models can be created, shared and reused.