uml2semantics is an application that allows you to convert a UML class diagram to an OWL 2 ontology. Translating a UML class diagram to an OWL 2 ontology allows one to reason over the ontology and thereby discover possible inconsistencies or unintended consequences. The UML to OWL translation we use is based on UML to OWL, which provides the related Manchester syntax and SROIQ semantics.

Project status

uml2semantics is in the very early stages of development and thus is missing many features. Currently it has support for specifying classes and attributes/associations using TSV files.

Assumption

This tool assumes that the UML class diagrams are conceptual models and as such they contain no implementation related details like interfaces, access modifiers or operations.

Downloading

Download uml2semantics.jar from latest release.

Java Version

Java 11+

Command Line Parameters

Short	Long	Required	Description
-c	--classes	No	TSV file containing UML class information
-a	--attributes	No	TSV file containing UML class attribute information
-m	--xmi	No	An XMI file exported from a UML tool
-o	--ontology	Yes	Output OWL ontology file
-i	--ontologyIRI	Yes	IRI of the ontology (e.g., https://example.com/ontology)
-p	--ontologyPrefix	Yes	Prefix for the ontology (e.g., ex:https://example.com/ontology/)
-x	--prefixes	No	Comma-separated list of additional prefixes (name:uri,...)
	--overrides	No	When both XMI and TSV are provided: TSV (default) or XMI. Indicates which source takes precedence.

At minimum, you must provide either TSV files (-c, -a, -e, -n) or an XMI file (-m) as input, along with the three required options (-o, -i, -p).

Quick Start

Employer and Employee example

As a quick start here is a small UML class diagram that we will convert to OWL. We define a Person class that has attributes name, surname and dateOfBirth. The types we use are name and surname is xsd:string and for dateOfBirth we use xsd:dateTime. Employee and Employer extends Person. An employee has exactly 1 employer and an employer has 1 or more employees.

TSV representation

UML class diagram information can be specified using TSV files. First create the TSV file for your classes. It has the following format:

Curie	Name	Definition	ParentNames
	Person
	Employee		Person
	Employer		Person

Here we only specify the name for each class, hence the reason we used the Name column to define our classes. Since Employee and Employer both extend the Person class, we add Person to ParentNames column. Multiple parents are separated by |. Curie refer to compact URI based on the W3C CURIE syntax.

To specify attributes we use the following format.

Class	Curie	Name	ClassEnumOrPrimitiveType	MinMultiplicity	MaxMultiplicity	Definition
Person		name	xsd:string
Person		surname	xsd:string
Person		dateOfBirth	xsd:dateTime
Employee		employedBy	Employer	1	1
Employer		employes	Employee	1	*

Class refers to the class for which we are defining the attributes. Attributes can also be defined using curies, but we again only used names for now. The type of an attribute can be a primitive or a class. Currenlty XML primitive data types as used in Protege Desktop data types are supported. When no multiplicity is given, [1..1] is assumed. * is to refer to infinite as per usual.

A Google spreadsheet for this UML class diagram can be found here. Save the classes and attributes tabs as TSV files.

Run uml2semantics using TSV files

Assuming you have downloaded uml2semantics to a $uml2semantics directory (you need to replace $uml2semantics with your directory name), the following will generate the employer ontology for the Employer example in $uml2semantics/examples/employer/ as $uml2semantics/examples/employer/employer.rdf:

java -jar uml2semantics.jar \
-c "$uml2semantics/examples/employer/Employer - Classes.tsv" \
-a "$uml2semantics/examples/employer/Employer - Attributes.tsv" \
-o "$uml2semantics/examples/employer/employer.rdf" \
-p "emp:http://uml2semantics.org/examples/employer#" \
-i "http://uml2semantics.org/examples/employer/v.0.1" 

Run uml2semantics using XMI file

Consider this example . Note: Currently enumerations are not read from XMI as yet.

Assuming your in the $uml2semantics directory where you have cloned uml2semantics and downloaded the uml2semantics.jar, you can read the example XMI as generated by Enterprise Architect using the following:

java -jar uml2semantics.jar \
-m "./examples/xmi/sparx/Employer-WithGeneralizationSet-CompleteOverlapping.xml" \
-o "./uml2semantics/examples/xmi/sparx/Employer-WithGeneralizationSet-CompleteOverlapping.rdf" \
-p "emp:http://uml2semantics.org/examples/employer#" \
-i "http://uml2semantics.org/examples/employer/v.0.1" 

This writes the ontology to ./uml2semantics/examples/xmi/sparx/Employer-WithGeneralizationSet-CompleteOverlapping.rdf.

Run uml2semantics using XMI and TSV files

You can provide both TSV and XMI input together. Use the --overrides option to control which source takes precedence when both define the same class or attribute. The default is TSV, meaning TSV values override XMI values.

java -jar uml2semantics.jar \
-m "./examples/xmi/sparx/Employer-WithGeneralizationSet-CompleteOverlapping.xml" \
-c "./examples/xmi/sparx/Employer - Classes.tsv" \
-a "./examples/xmi/sparx/Employer - Attributes.tsv" \
--overrides TSV \
-o "./uml2semantics/examples/xmi/sparx/Employer-WithGeneralizationSet-CompleteOverlapping-TSVOverride.rdf" \
-p "emp:http://uml2semantics.org/examples/employer#" \
-i "http://uml2semantics.org/examples/employer/v.0.1" 

The resulting ontology is written to ./uml2semantics/examples/xmi/sparx/Employer-WithGeneralizationSet-CompleteOverlapping-TSVOverride.rdf. Due to the use of the override, instead of having http://uml2semantics.org/examples/employer#Person as the IRI of the Person class, it is now http://schema.org/Person. We can do something similar for the name attribute of Person, where we may want to rather make use of1 Schema.org's givenName. This is of use where existing UML class diagrams need to be integrated with linked data. Such overrides are not limited to curies only. It can be anything that can be specified via TSV and could include additional classes and attributes.

DCAT version 2 Example

Initial DCAT version 2 example is defined here.