Keeping modular and platform-independent software up-to-date: benefits from the Semantic Web

Context We consider the problem of automating the maintenance of a platform-independent software environment composed of one main application, several plugins and some external thirdparty applications. We assume that the architecture is distributed and loosely coupled: each of these software component can be maintained by different groups and hosted separately, and no common release format is required. Particularly, we consider the Protégé ontology editor and knowledge base manipulation framework. In addition to the core system of Protégé, the community developed and provides about one hundred plugins. Protégé can also be used in conjunction with independent external applications such as reasoners (e.g. Racer) or inference engines (e.g. Jess).