Split along stable seams; manage transitive imports; avoid the monolith.
Split along stable seams; manage transitive imports; avoid the monolith.
A single 10,000-axiom ontology becomes unmaintainable. The fix is the same as in software: modules with thin, well-versioned interfaces — implemented via owl:imports and competency-question clustering.
A modular ontology is a microservice architecture for knowledge — and a monolithic 10k-axiom OWL file is the legacy WAR everyone is afraid to deploy.
In a microservice estate, each service has a narrow, well-versioned API; teams compose them through thin dependencies. In a monolith, every change risks every feature, and onboarding a new engineer means swallowing the whole thing. Same with ontologies: split along stable conceptual seams (domain modules, upper-alignment module, application module) and consumers can owl:imports only what they need.
The catch — and it's the same catch as in microservices — is transitive dependencies. owl:imports A, where A imports B, where B imports the whole Basic Formal Ontology, suddenly pulls in thousands of axioms you never agreed to reason over. The discipline that prevents 'dependency hell' in code (lock files, flat imports, minimal interfaces) is exactly the discipline that keeps ontology modules useful.
Use the prompts below to anchor modular ontologies and owl:imports to a real ontology you care about.
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