Evaluation of visual syntax specification techniques: a study of OWL

Diagrams are an integral part of our communication and thus automated processing of diagrams becomes increasingly relevant. One way to realise automated processing is by using declarative specifications of diagrams. These declarative specifications have similarities to domain knowledge modelled in ontologies. The Web Ontology Language (OWL), an open standard of W3C, is a prominent ontology language to model domain knowledge. In this paper, OWL is evaluated for its suitability to specify visual syntax of diagrams. Specifically, reviews of literature are conducted to establish relevant evaluation criteria and to obtain evidence about OWL for the established criteria. The evaluation indicates that OWL is used widely, which could be attributed to its standardisation and expressiveness, and consequently, it has extensive tool support, including reasoners and editors, with noticeable presence of open source tools. The evaluation also indicates that although OWL has been used successfully for diagram specifications, further research is required to understand entirely its strengths and limitations as a visual syntax specification technique.