OWL research at the University of Manchester

Joint research by members of the Information Management Group and the Bio-Health Informatics Group.

List of Reasoners

Last updated: 19 June 2018

This page contains two lists (in alphabetical order) of Description Logic reasoners, together with a description of their capabilities and links to their web page. The first list is about reasoners which are currently being enhanced, maintained, and worked on. For readability, we first present a table with links to core publications (as confirmed by the reasoner developers) and then a more detailed list with descriptions and features. The current version of the list was determined as part of a survey on OWL reasoners (filled in by the developers themselves), to be presented at ORE 2015. The second list is about reasoners which are possibly still available, yet have not been modified for a longer period of time. It is maintained by Uli Sattler and Nico Matentzoglu. If you want your reasoner to be added to this web page or want to update or modify one of the entries, please send us an email and fill in this survey.

The descriptions given for the reasoners reflect our view of what they do, and are kept very short so as to provide an overview: to learn more about their full capabilities, please visit the corresponding web page.

A list of implementations around OWL 2 (including reasoners, APIs, editors…) can be found at OWL 2’s implementation site. The old version of this page for reference can be found here.

Overview

Reasoner Instution Download Publication
BaseVISor VIStology, Inc. Download Core publication
BUNDLE University of Ferrara Download Core publication
CEL Technische Universität Dresden Download Core publication
Chainsaw The University of Manchester Download Core publication
Clipper Vienna University of Technology Download Core publication
DBOWL University of Malaga Download Core publication
DeLorean Not given Download Core publication
DistEL Wright State University Download Core publication
DRAOn University of Paris 8, IUT of Montreuil Download Core publication
DReW Vienna University of Technology Download Core publication
ELepHant Not given Download Core publication
ELK University of Ulm, Germany Download Core publication
ELOG Not given Download Core publication
FaCT++ The University of Manchester Download Core publication
fuzzyDL ISTI – CNR Download Core publication
HermiT University of Oxford Download Core publication
jcel Technische Universität Dresden Download Core publication
JFact The University of Manchester Download Core publication
Konclude University of Ulm, derivo GmbH Download Core publication
LiFR Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) Download Core publication
Mastro Sapienza University of Rome Download Core publication
MORe University of Oxford Download Core publication
ontop Free University of Bozen-Bolzano Download Core publication
Pellet Clark & Parsia, LLC Download Core publication
Racer Concordia University, Montreal, Canada; University of Lübeck, Germany; Download Core publication
RDFox University of Oxford Download Core publication
RuQAR Poznan University of Technology Download Core publication
Snorocket CSIRO Download Core publication
TReasoner Tyumen State University Download Core publication
TRILL University of Ferrara Download Core publication
TRILLP University of Ferrara Download Core publication
TrOWL University of Aberdeen Download Core publication
WSClassifier University of New Brunswick, Canada Download Core publication
Mini-ME Politecnico di Bari, Italy Download Core publication
Living Semantic Platform Softplant GmbH – http://www.softplant.de/ Download Core publication
KARMA University of Oxford Download Core publication
HydrOWL National Technical University of Athens Download Core publication
PAGOdA University of Oxford Download Core publication
TORNADO University of Ferrera Download Core publication

Details

  • BaseVISor, hosted at VIStology, Inc., published under BaseVISor is licensed for academic and research use free of charge; all other uses require a commercial license.. BaseVISor is a versatile, highly efficient forward-chaining inference engine, based on a Rete network, specialized to handle facts in the form of RDF triples with support for OWL 2 RL and XML Schema Datatypes. It is written in Java and can be run as a standalone application or be embedded in existing applications. BaseVISor is optimized for ontological and rule-based reasoning. Users can develop procedural attachments that can be invoked from within a rule to perform a complex calculation, access a Web service or execute new processes, complementing a large set of BaseVISor’s built-in functions. BaseVISor is licensed for academic and research use free of charge. Supported interfaces: Command Line, Other. Supported reasoning services: realisation, classification, satisfiability, conjunctive query answering, entailment, consistency. Supported syntaxes: RDF/XML, OWL/XML, All OWL API Download, Core publication.
  • BUNDLE, hosted at University of Ferrara, published under AGPL license Version 3. BUNDLE (“Binary decision diagrams for Uncertain reasoNing on Description Logic thEories”) is a probabilistic reasoner that computes the probability of queries from a probabilistic knowledge base that follows the DISPONTE probabilistic semantics. It can exploit Pellet, HermiT, Fact++ and JFact as underlying reasoner combined with different interfaces, extending them to probabilistic inference. It supports also non-probabilistic reasoning. Supported interfaces: Jena, Command Line, OWL API. Supported reasoning services: satisfiability, entailment, consistency, explanation. Supported syntaxes: Turtle, RDF/XML, Krss2, Latex, OWL/XML, Functional, All OWL API, Manchester Download, Core publication.
  • CEL, hosted at Technische Universität Dresden, published under Apache License 2.0 (CEL) / GNU Lesser General Public License 3.0 (CEL Plug-in). CEL is a free (for non-commercial use) Lisp-based reasoner for EL+. It implements a refined version of a polynomial-time classification algorithm and supports new features like module extraction and axiom pinpointing. It is distributed with a Java-base adapter to use the OWL API and to be used as a Protégé plug-in. Supported interfaces: Protege, Command Line, OWL API. Supported reasoning services: classification, satisfiability, consistency. Supported syntaxes: Turtle, RDF/XML, Krss2, OBO, OWL/XML, Functional, All OWL API, Manchester Download, Core publication.
  • Chainsaw, hosted at The University of Manchester, published under LGPL. Chainsaw is a free (LGPL) OWL 2 DL reasoner for very large ontologies. It uses a modular decomposition to tackle the high complexity of the reasoning. Uses delegate reasoner(s) to perform single reasoning tasks. Supported interfaces: Protege, OWL API. Supported reasoning services: realisation, classification, satisfiability, entailment, consistency. Supported syntaxes: All OWL API Download, Core publication.
  • Clipper, hosted at Vienna University of Technology, published under Apache 2.0. Clipper is a Reasoner for conjunctive query answering over Horn-SHIQ ontology via query rewriting. Supported interfaces: OWL API. Supported reasoning services: conjunctive query answering. Supported syntaxes: All OWL API Download, Core publication.
  • DBOWL, hosted at University of Malaga, published under GNU General Public License. DBOWL is a scalable reasoner for OWL ontologies with very large Aboxes. DBOWL stores ontologies and classifies instances in Named Classes and Properties using relational database technology. It combines relational algebra expressions and fixed-point iterations in order to compute the closure of the ontology, called the knowledge base creation. It also supports SPARQL queries. Supported interfaces: Other. Supported reasoning services: classification, satisfiability, conjunctive query answering, consistency. Supported syntaxes: RDF/XML Download, Core publication.
  • DeLorean, hosted at Not given, published under NA. DeLorean is a fuzzy rough Description Logic reasoner. It supports a fuzzy rough extension of OWL 2. Supported interfaces: Command Line, Other. Supported reasoning services: realisation, classification, satisfiability, entailment, consistency, Service Fuzzy. Supported syntaxes: NA Download, Core publication.
  • DistEL, hosted at Wright State University, published under NA. DistEL is a distributed reasoner that runs on a cluster of machines. It has support for a major part of OWL 2 EL profile. As of now, it has support for only classification task. Supported interfaces: Command Line. Supported reasoning services: realisation, classification. Supported syntaxes: NA Download, Core publication.
  • DRAOn, hosted at University of Paris 8, IUT of Montreuil, published under LGPL. DRAOn is an OWL reasoner that supports distributed reasoning over a networked ontologies. It is based on local reasoners that implement an algorithm building compressed models. Supported interfaces: OWL API. Supported reasoning services: entailment, consistency. Supported syntaxes: All OWL API Download, Core publication.
  • DReW, hosted at Vienna University of Technology, published under Apache 2.0. DReW is a reasoner for DL-Programs over Datalog-rewritable Description Logics. The algorithm is based on rewriting to Datalog. Supported interfaces: Command Line, OWL API. Supported reasoning services: conjunctive query answering. Supported syntaxes: All OWL API Download, Core publication.
  • ELepHant, hosted at Not given, published under Apache License, Version 2.0. ELepHant is a consequence-based reasoner that currently supports part of the OWL 2 EL fragment for the reasoning tasks classification, consistency and realization. Its aim is to provide lightweight and performant reasoning for the full OWL 2 EL fragment. Supported interfaces: Command Line. Supported reasoning services: realisation, classification, consistency. Supported syntaxes: Functional Download, Core publication.
  • ELK, hosted at University of Ulm, Germany, published under Apache 2. ELK is a reasoner for OWL 2 ontologies that currently supports a part of the OWL EL ontology language. Supported interfaces: Protege, Command Line, OWL API. Supported reasoning services: realisation, classification, satisfiability, entailment, consistency. Supported syntaxes: Functional Download, Core publication.
  • ELOG, hosted at Not given, published under GNU GPL v3. ELOG is a reasoner for log-linear description logics, a probabilistic logical formalisms that combines description logics and log-linear models. Supported interfaces: OWL API. Supported reasoning services: realisation, entailment. Supported syntaxes: RDF/XML, OWL/XML, All OWL API Download, Core publication.
  • FaCT++, hosted at The University of Manchester, published under LGPL. FaCT++ is a free (LGPL) highly optimised open-source C++-based tableaux reasoner for OWL 2 DL. Supported interfaces: Protege, Command Line, OWL API, Other. Supported reasoning services: realisation, classification, satisfiability, entailment, consistency. Supported syntaxes: NA Download, Core publication.
  • fuzzyDL, hosted at ISTI – CNR, published under NA. fuzzyDL is a free Java/C++ based reasoner for fuzzy SHIF with concrete fuzzy concepts (explicit definition of fuzzy sets + modifiers). It implements a tableau + Mixed Integer Linear Programming optimization decision procedure to compute the maximal degree of subsumption and instance checking w.r.t. a general TBox and Abox. It supports Zadeh semantics, Lukasiewicz semantics and is backward compatible with classical description logic reasoning. Supported interfaces: Protege. Supported reasoning services: satisfiability, entailment, consistency, Service Fuzzy. Supported syntaxes: OWL/XML Download, Core publication.
  • HermiT, hosted at University of Oxford, published under LGPL. HermiT is an OWL 2 DL reasoner — to my knowledge, one of the few such systems that attempts (modulo bugs) to fully and correctly support the OWL 2 DL specification. Supported interfaces: Protege, Command Line, OWL API. Supported reasoning services: realisation, classification, satisfiability, entailment, consistency. Supported syntaxes: All OWL API Download, Core publication.
  • jcel, hosted at Technische Universität Dresden, published under Apache License 2.0 and GNU Lesser General Public License 3.0. jcel is a free open-source Java-based reasoner for EL+ and supports parts of the OWL 2 EL profile. It implements a polynomial-time modular consequence-based algorithm for general TBoxes (subsumption, satisfiability, classification) and ABoxes (retrieval). It supports the OWL API and can be used as a Protégé plug-in. Supported interfaces: Protege, Command Line, OWL API. Supported reasoning services: classification, satisfiability, entailment, consistency. Supported syntaxes: Turtle, RDF/XML, Krss2, OBO, OWL/XML, Functional, All OWL API, Manchester Download, Core publication.
  • JFact, hosted at The University of Manchester, published under LGPL. JFact is a pure Java port of FaCT++, with versions for Owlapi 3.x and 4.x. It is kept in step with FaCT++ and updated regularly. It has been used on Android devices with Owlapi 3.5. It is available packaged as a Protégé plugin, for Protégé 4.3 and 5. Supported interfaces: OWL API. Supported reasoning services: realisation, classification, satisfiability, entailment, consistency. Supported syntaxes: NA Download, Core publication.
  • Konclude, hosted at University of Ulm, derivo GmbH, published under LGPL 2.1. Konclude is a parallel, high-performance reasoner for the Description Logic SROIQV(D). It is implemented in C++ and uses a reasoning technique that is based on a highly optimized tableau algorithm assisted by a completion-based saturation procedure. At the moment, it supports many standard reasoning tasks such as consistency checking, classification, realisation and can be used via command line or OWLlink. Supported interfaces: OWLLink, Command Line. Supported reasoning services: realisation, classification, satisfiability, consistency. Supported syntaxes: OWL/XML, Functional Download, Core publication.
  • LiFR, hosted at Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH), published under GNU LGPL. LiFR is a Lightweight Fuzzy DL Reasoner, capable of performing in resource-constrained devices. It supports f-DLP (Zadeh fuzzy operators) by translating DL axioms to first order clauses and by using the hyper-tableaux calculus. It accepts as input a variant of the KRSS syntax. Supported interfaces: Other. Supported reasoning services: satisfiability, entailment, consistency, Service Fuzzy. Supported syntaxes: NA Download, Core publication.
  • Mastro, hosted at Sapienza University of Rome, published under Executable available for research purposes. For other needs, please contact the developers.. Mastro is a free (for non-commercial use) Java-based reasoner for OWL 2 QL and ontology languages of the DL-Lite family. The main reasoning services provided by Mastro are: conjunctive query answering, consistency checking, instance checking, and TBox reasoning (logical implication, classification, and satisfiability). Mastro works in two settings: the classical setting with ontologies composed by a TBox and an ABox, and the Ontology-based Data Access setting in which the ontology is connected to external data management systems through semantic mappings that associate SQL queries over the external data sources (typically relational DBs) to the elements of the ontology. It supports the OWL-API and comes with its own Java-based interface. Supported interfaces: Command Line, OWL API. Supported reasoning services: classification, satisfiability, conjunctive query answering, entailment, consistency. Supported syntaxes: RDF/XML, OWL/XML, Functional, All OWL API, Manchester Download, Core publication.
  • MORe, hosted at University of Oxford, published under GNU Lesser GPL. MORe uses module extraction techniques to classify ontologies combining reasoners especially optimised for different OWL 2 profiles. Supported interfaces: Protege, Command Line, OWL API. Supported reasoning services: classification, satisfiability. Supported syntaxes: All OWL API Download, Core publication.
  • ontop, hosted at Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, published under Apache 2.0. Ontop is a platform to query databases as Virtual RDF Graphs using SPARQL. It’s extremely fast and is packed with features. Supported interfaces: Protege, OWL API, Other. Supported reasoning services: realisation, conjunctive query answering. Supported syntaxes: All OWL API Download, Core publication.
  • Pellet, hosted at Clark & Parsia, LLC, published under AGPL v3. Pellet is a free open-source Java-based reasoner for OWL 2 and SWRL. It supports the full expressivity of SROIQ Description Logic, user-defined datatypes and DL-safe rules. Pellet uses a tableau-based decision procedure to provide many reasoning services (subsumption, satisfiability, classification, instance retrieval, conjunctive query answering) along with the capability to generate explanations for the inferences it computes. It has bindings for both the OWL-API and the Jena libraries. Supported interfaces: Jena, Protege, Command Line, OWL API. Supported reasoning services: realisation, classification, satisfiability, conjunctive query answering, entailment, consistency, explanation. Supported syntaxes: Turtle, RDF/XML, Krss2, OWL/XML, Functional, Manchester Download, Core publication.
  • Racer, hosted at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada; University of Lübeck, Germany;, published under BSD-3. Racer (Renamed ABox And Concept Expression Reasoner) is a knowledge representation system that implements a highly optimized tableau calculus for the description logic SRIQ(D). Racer provides implementations of standard reasoning problems for T-boxes and A-boxes. In addition, some non-standard inference services are provided, such as, e.g., logical abduction. Racer also provides the powerful and semantically well-defined conjunctive query language nRQL (new Racer Query Language, to be pronounced as niracle and heard as miracle), which also supports negation as failure, numeric constraints w.r.t. attribute values of different individuals, substring properties between string attributes, etc. It has convenient APIs for accessing its reasoning services from within Common Lisp and Java. Racer is distributed under the BSD 3-clause license. Supported interfaces: OWLLink, Protege, Command Line, OWL API, Other. Supported reasoning services: realisation, classification, satisfiability, conjunctive query answering, consistency, explanation. Supported syntaxes: RDF/XML, OWL/XML, Functional, All OWL API Download, Core publication.
  • RDFox, hosted at University of Oxford, published under Oxford Academic Licence. RDFox is a RDF triple store and parallel datalog/SWRL reasoner. It supports most SPARQL builtins (used in BIND and FILTER). The data is separately supplied in Turtle or N-Triple format. Supported interfaces: Other. Supported reasoning services: conjunctive query answering, entailment. Supported syntaxes: Turtle, All OWL API Download, Core publication.
  • RuQAR, hosted at Poznan University of Technology, published under NA. RuQAR is is a free (for non-commercial use) tool that provides the ABox reasoning and conjunctive query answering with OWL 2 RL ontologies executed by forward chaining rule reasoners. The tool implements also a method of transforming OWL 2 ontologies into Jess and Drools engines. Supported interfaces: Other. Supported reasoning services: conjunctive query answering. Supported syntaxes: RDF/XML, OWL/XML Download, Core publication.
  • Snorocket, hosted at CSIRO, published under Apache 2.0. Snorocket is an open source, high-performance ontology reasoner that supports a subset of the OWL EL profi le. Supported interfaces: Protege, OWL API. Supported reasoning services: classification, consistency. Supported syntaxes: All OWL API Download, Core publication.
  • TReasoner, hosted at Tyumen State University, published under GNU GPL 2. TReasoner is a free tableau algorithm based reasoner. It is written on Java, uses OWL API and supports SROIQ(D) logics. It was created for developing and new optimization techniques for tableau algorithm. This reasoner used for many applied tasks: from database validation to automated timetabling. Supported interfaces: Command Line, OWL API. Supported reasoning services: classification, satisfiability, consistency. Supported syntaxes: All OWL API Download, Core publication.
  • TRILL, hosted at University of Ferrara, published under The Artistic License 2.0. TRILL (“Tableau Reasoner for descrIption Logics in Prolog”) is a probabilistic reasoner which implements a tableau algorithm in Prolog to find the set of all the explanations and compute the probability of a query. TRILL is available for both Yap Prolog and SWI-Prolog. Supported interfaces: Other. Supported reasoning services: satisfiability, entailment, consistency, explanation. Supported syntaxes: NA Download, Core publication.
  • TRILLP, hosted at University of Ferrara, published under The Artistic License 2.0. TRILLP is based on the reasoner TRILL written in Prolog. TRILLP is a tableau probabilistic reasoner which computes a Boolean formula that represents the set of the explanations of the query. From this formula the probability of the query is then computed. Supported interfaces: Other. Supported reasoning services: satisfiability, entailment, consistency. Supported syntaxes: NA Download, Core publication.
  • TrOWL, hosted at University of Aberdeen, published under AGPL for open source applications. TrOWL is a Tractable reasoning infrastructure for OWL 2. TrOWL supports not only standard TBox and ABox reasoning, but also conjunctive query answering in SPARQL. Supported interfaces: Jena, Protege, Command Line, OWL API. Supported reasoning services: realisation, classification, satisfiability, conjunctive query answering, entailment, consistency. Supported syntaxes: NA Download, Core publication.
  • WSClassifier, hosted at University of New Brunswick, Canada, published under MIT. WSClassifier is a free prototypical (under MIT license) Java reasoner for classifying DL ALCHOI(D-) with limited datatype support, using a hybrid of the consequence-based reasoner ConDOR and the hypertableau-based reasoner HermiT. It supports OWL-API. Supported interfaces: OWL API. Supported reasoning services: classification. Supported syntaxes: All OWL API Download, Core publication.
  • OwlOntDB, information currently missing.
  • Deslog, information currently missing.
  • Mini-ME, hosted at Politecnico di Bari, Italy, published under Free to use for non-commercial and academic purposes. Matchmaker and reasoner for mobile and pervasive devices. Supported interfaces: OWLLink, OWL API, Interface Protege, Interface Othersoftware. Supported reasoning services: NA. Supported syntaxes: All OWL API Download, Core publication.
  • Living Semantic Platform, hosted at Softplant GmbH – http://www.softplant.de/, published under proprietary. The Living Semantic Platform combines a web-based ontology editor with a high-performance reasoning engine for lightweight ontologies (OWL 2 QL profile) within a single application. Data from external data sources such as SQL databases, Excel files, PDF files or XML files can be easily integrated into your ontologies. The integrated reasoner can be queried using the SPARQL query language – either using the web interface or directly via a REST service. This allows you to simply utilize your modeled ontologies within in your applications. Online demo http://demo.softplant.de/LivingSemanticPlatform/ Supported interfaces: Interface Othersoftware. Supported reasoning services: NA. Supported syntaxes: RDF/XML, OWL/XML, Turtle Download, Core publication.
  • KARMA, hosted at University of Oxford, published under GNU Lesser General Public License. A prototypical system for answering conjunctive queries over OWL 2 EL ontologies without complex role inclusions. Supported interfaces: Command Line. Supported reasoning services: NA. Supported syntaxes: OWL/XML Download, Core publication.
  • HydrOWL, hosted at National Technical University of Athens, published under AGPL. HydrOWL is a system for query answering over expressive DL ontologies. It is based on the idea of combining several different systems, e.g., a scalable OWL 2 RL one with a heavy weight OWL 2 DL one in order to support efficiency and increased expressivity. Supported interfaces: OWL API, Interface Othersoftware. Supported reasoning services: NA. Supported syntaxes: null Download, Core publication.
  • PAGOdA, hosted at University of Oxford, published under academic licence. PAGOdA is a sound and complete query answering engine for OWL 2 ontologies combining the scalable datalog reasoner RDFox and the OWL 2 reasoner HermiT. Supported interfaces: OWL API, Command Line. Supported reasoning services: NA. Supported syntaxes: All OWL API Download, Core publication.
  • TORNADO, hosted at University of Ferrara, published under The Artistic License 2.0. TORNADO is based on the reasoner TRILLP written in Prolog. TORNADO implements the tableau algorithm for SHI description logics and returns a binary decision diagram modeling the pinpointing formula or the corresponding probability. Supported interfaces: Other. Supported reasoning services: satisfiability, entailment, consistency. Supported syntaxes: NA

Other Description Logic Reasoners

Description Logic Reasoners for which no evidence of maintenance (since January 2012) was found. If you believe one of these reasoners is still actively maintained, and available, please send us an email.

  • COROR
  • RacerPro
  • *SAT
  • BACK
  • CB
  • Cerebra Engine
  • CICLOP
  • CLASSIC
  • Condor
  • CRACK
  • DLP
  • Fact
  • FLEX
  • HAM-ALC
  • K-REP
  • Bossam
  • KRIS
  • LOOM
  • MSPASS
  • QuOnto
  • SHER
  • YAK
  • OWLGres
  • Pronto
  • DLEJena
  • F-OWL
  • Fresg
  • OWLer
  • OntoMinD
  • Screech
  • REQUIEM
  • YARR
  • Kaon2
  • Elly
  • SoftFacts