Author: Matthew Horridge
The University Of Manchester
Bio-Health Informatics Group Date: 24-Oct-2006
An
OWLOntology
contains a set of axioms. Ontologies do not specifically contain entities such as classes, properties or individuals - these entities are merely referenced by the axioms that the ontology contains. They form the
signature of the ontology. Unlike some APIs it is therefore not possible to directly add or remove entities to or from an ontology.
An ontology cannot be modified directly. Changes must be applied using an
OWLOntologyManager
.