7.5 Jena Rules


Jena, the Semantic Web Framework, also supports rules, called Jena rules.
Jena, similar to SWRL, contains its own syntax to construct a rule and a set of built-in methods that can be used in rules.
Jena rules are bound to a rule reasoner.
A rule reasoner is bound to a model or schema, as with any Jena reasoner, with the call to bindSchema(schema). Once bound to a model, the rule fires in accordance to its configuration.
A reasoner, including a rule reasoner, may fire in a forward-chaining mode, backward-chaining mode, or a hybrid of both.
A Jena rule contains a list of body terms or premises (the if clause) and a list of head terms or conclusions (the then clause).
Each rule can optionally have a name for convenience and a direction for hybrid rules. As an alternative to SWRL, Jena rules provide basic rule syntax to expand the expressiveness of ontology.