I want to update/delete the axioms from a OWL Class (e.g SubclassOf axioms).
I have following two approaches :
1) Delete all old axioms then create all new axioms.
2) Delete selective axioms by comparing it with new axioms.
Note :- Due to some limitations I have to treat update cases as delete + create
Q. Which is the best strategy to go aheas in terms of performance for OWLAPI ?
E.g.
I have following SubclassOF axioms for Class X -
1) A or B
2) name exactly 1 xsd:string
3) P and not Q
and I want to update/delete these axioms with -
1) A [Update]
2) name min 1 xsd:string [Update]
3) Axiom is deleted [Delete]
The performance of axiom removals is equivalent to axiomatization additions. The main actions are searches through maps to find existing elements or add new ones.
The structures involved are O(Constant) for the input, so the total complexity is mostly independent of the ontology size (this might not hold true for very large ontologies, but it's accurate for most ontologies).
In short there is no performance issue with your proposed solution (2).
I would not suggest recreating axioms - this is likely to be expensive in terms of memory use. Axioms are immutable, so the new and old objects behave exactly the same.