Ontology for OpenAPI REST Services Descriptions

OpenAPI Specification (OAS) defines a description format for REST APIs. In order for a machine to understand the meaning of REST services, OpenAPI service descriptions must be unambiguous. In a previous work we analysed the reasons that cause ambiguities in OpenAPI and showed that, in order to eliminate ambiguities, OpenAPI properties must be semantically annotated and mapped to a semantic model. Leveraging latest results for hypermedia-based construction of Web APIs (i.e. Hydra), the present work forwards this approach and proposes a reference ontology for REST services along with a formal procedure for converting OpenAPI service descriptions to instances of this ontology.