Sparrow Language

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Intended audience

This document is intended for SEEK and Kepler developers. It is a DRAFT DESIGN DOCUMENT and does not reflect functionality as it currently exists in Kepler or SEEK. Comments and feedback are appreciated.

Introduction

Sparrow is an ontology syntax and language that is meant as a "lightweight" alternative to RDF/S and OWL. This document describes the basic syntax of sparrow.

Basic Sparrow

Concepts and roles in sparrow are defined using sentences. We assume two special concepts sparrow:top and sparrow:bottom, which are typically found in most ontology languages. The term sparrow:top consists of the sparrow namespace and the atomic term (concept) top. A new concept can be defined by an expression:

myConcept is_a sparrow:top. 

Packaging Sparrow Ontologies

A sparrow ontology consists of one or more sparrow sentences. The following two sentences define

sparrow define myOnt uri 'http://seek.ecoinformatics.org/#myOnt'
sparrow import yourOnt uri 'http://seek.ecoinformatic.org/#yourOnt'