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javaontologyowlowl-api

How to make a deep copy of an OWLOntology

In my program I need to make a deep copy of an instance of OWLOntology.

I suppose I need to create a new OWLOntologyManager:

ontologyManager = OWLManager.createOWLOntologyManager();

now I want to add an ontology to the manager which is a DEEP copy of a given OWLOntology. I don't want to load the ontology again from a document, because this takes to much time.

How can I do that in an easy way?

Solution

  • There's indeed no method to deep copy as far as I know. One solution is to add all the axioms present in your first ontology to a newly created ontology instance. This way you keep everything in memory and no needs to re-read the files. The OWL entities (classes, properties, etc...) should be copied too.

    The following code should work (not tested):

    manager.addAxioms(newOntology, oldOntology.getAxioms());