Transformation of thematic cartography domain ontology into Java interfaces and clasess

Abstract

The article deals with the transformation of an experimental ontology, classifying selected declarative knowledge for the domain of thematic cartography, into classes and interfaces of the Java language. The reason for this transformation is to transfer the declarative knowledge from the field of thematic cartography into the form of a program code in the Java programming language. The resulting program code containing declarations of interfaces and classes will be further used for creating a software application for an intelligent system for the interactive support of thematic map creation. The upcoming pilot project of this knowledge system is designed for the users without necessary cartographic knowledge, which will allow them to create interactively thematic maps and provide them with the support. The purpose of the use of such a tool is to prevent the users from deviating from established cartographic rules and avoid the occurrence of gross errors in resulting maps. A properly compiled knowledge ontology facilitates the design of the prepared intelligent cartographic application, as the use of cartographic knowledge is enabled based on the automated transformation into the program code in the Java language. The generated program code contains declarations of basic concepts of thematic cartography, their structuring into classes corresponding to the source structures described in the ontology. The code also contains descriptions vertical and horizontal relations between the declared classes and also the interface for access to these classes and relations. The automated transformation of ontology into the Java code is not completely lossless. The examples of a transformation of individual components of ontology (classes, individuals, and object and datatype properties) into interfaces and classes in Java show the differences occurred during the transfer of the declarative knowledge into the program code. From these examples it is clear that the elements of ontology component description are or are not transformed into the Java code in full. The article proposes recommendations how to optimize the knowledge description on the part of ontology in order to minimize possible losses of the transformation of knowledge into the Java code.