3.1.3 OWLIM Interoperability and Architecture

OWLIM version 3.X is packaged as a Storage and Inference Layer (SAIL) for Sesame version 2.x and makes extensive use of the features and infrastructure of Sesame, especially the RDF model, RDF parsers and query engines.

Inference is performed by the TRREE engine, where the explicit and inferred statements are stored in highly-optimized data structures that are kept in-memory for query evaluation and further inference. The inferred closure is updated through inference at the end of each transaction that modifies the repository.

Figure 2 - OWLIM Usage and Relations to Sesame and TRREE

OWLIM implements the Sesame SAIL interface so that it can be integrated with the rest of the Sesame framework, e.g. the query engines and the web UI. A user application can be designed to use OWLIM directly through the Sesame SAIL API or via the higher-level functional interfaces such as RDFDB. When an OWLIM repository is exposed using the Sesame HTTP Server, users can manage the repository through the Sesame Workbench Web application, or with other tools integrated with Sesame, e.g. ontology editors like Protege and TopBraid Composer.