How to execute SWRL Rules in Protege 4.3?

Question

I have created an ontology in Protege 4.3 along with a set of SWRL rules. In order to execute those rules and execute queries do I need another program to work with Protege or a plugin? Is a reasoner useful for this job? Searching I came across a lot of reasoners but I can't understand their usage, although I believe they may be relevant. I have found a lot of questions in here regarding Protege but none of them actually helped.

Answer 1

SWRL rules require a reasoner that supports them (as mentioned already by Joshua Taylor). This reasoner must come in the form of a Protege plugin to be usable inside Protege.

Usually Protege ships with at least one reasoner supporting SWRL rules, that's HermiT. You should see it available in the Reasoner menu.

To let any reasoner be used (for either SWRL or OWL inference), just select it and click on Reasoner -> Start reasoner.