Semantic Overflow

Question

3

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I can spell RDF, RDFS, and OWL; but that's about all I can do, so bare with me.

I think I need an RDF editor.

In Eclipse, I've been playing with TopBraid Composer, which I understand is for working with ontologies. And 'ontologies' I understand to mean class structures written in RDFS or OWL. Um, OK?

So now I have what I think may be a valid ontology, I'd like to create some instances of my shiny new classes. I need RDF for that, right?

I can't be alone in this. When you are working with RDF, do you work in a text editor, or is there a more specific tool out there?

Have mercy on my swirling brain.

edited Feb 17 at 15:32

Bastian Spanneberg
1,181●1●10

asked Jan 28 at 15:00

dpinn
119●6

billroberts · Accepted Answer · 2010-01-29 13:13:20Z UTC

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For small chunks of RDF (or RDFS/OWL) I usually just use a text editor. For producing RDF in larger quantities I'm usually creating it programmatically based on data in a database or a file.

answered Jan 29 at 13:13

billroberts
718●8

Bastian Spanneberg · Answer 2 · 2010-01-28 15:57:50Z UTC

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You may want to have a look at Protégé, which is an ontology editor, but can also be used to enter individuals/instances. It may be a bit over the top, though, as it's a quite large and complex tool.

answered Jan 28 at 15:57

Bastian Spanneberg
1,181●1●10

Just tried Protégé. Yes, it is pretty complex, but I guess that's the nature of the semantic knowledge beast. I encountered error, though, and the error messages didn't help. – dpinn Jan 28 at 22:21

ViktorZ · Answer 3 · 2010-01-29 07:55:59Z UTC

You can create instances in TopBraid Composer too.

Just right click on an ontology class and select Create New Instance...
Then you will be asked to identifier of the new instance.
Next you get a view where you can populate some properties.

But beware - TopBraid shows all properties that have the same rdfs:Domain which can lead you to some wrong conclusions if you come from OO background. Like that rdfs:Domain links a property to a Class like in OO design. Keep in mind that you have to fill only the properties that you want, not everything and that you can add more properties from the plus button in the top right corner.

Also there is an Instances panel in the bottom of the central panel. It shows all instances that are from the currently selected type.

Ivan · Answer 4 · 2010-02-17 13:45:08Z UTC

It is not free (well, fairly pricy, in fact) but I had some good experiences with Altova's Suite, if you are o.k. using RDF/XML (and not Turtle). There is also a visual editor for (simple) vocabulary editing, too. It is, in fact, an xml editor (which helps a lot already in filtering out some of the common problems) but knows about the basics of RDF/XML.

I must admit that an average XML editor (in emacs, jEdit, or elsewhere) does help a lot by itself.

Are there such things as RDF editors?

4 Answers