Features

This page is intended to give a short description on all relevant OntoWiki features. You can also use it as a starting point for detailed documentation (if existing).

Installation and Management

Guided Installation

Installation of OntoWiki is very easy:

• Unpack the archive to your directory
• Start your Browser
• Go to the Onto Wiki directory and follow the instructions

If you are new to OntoWiki, you maybe want to the read the First Steps Documentation.

User Management

Access Control

From Version 0.7 on, you can manage a detailed model based access control in Onto Wiki. Access to a model can be granted or denied for an account or a group. We distinguish two types of access (read and write).

A detailed description of access control setup options can be found here.

User Interface

Facet-based Browsing

Taxonomic structures give users exactly one way to access the information. Furthermore, the development of appropriate taxonomic structures (whether e.g.
class or SKOS keyword hierarchies) requires significant initial efforts. As a pay-as-you-go strategy, facet-based browsing allows to reduce the efforts for a priori knowledge structuring, while still offering efficient means to retrieve information.
To enable users to select objects according to certain facets, all property values (facets) of a set of selected instances are analyzed. If for a certain property the instances have only a limited set of values, those values are offered to restrict the instance selection further. Hence, this way of navigation through data will never lead to empty results.

Inline Editing

To enable users to rapidly edit or add statements as soon as they notice mistakes or missing information Onto Wiki features an inline editing mode. A double click on a specific literal or resource presents statement editor based on a widget.

Map Tab

If selected data (either a single instance or a list of instances) contains property values representing geographical information (i.e. longitude and latitude coordinates) a map view provides information about the geographical location of the selected data.
Technically, this view is realized by integrating the Google Maps API. However, the integration is bi-directional, since objects displayed in the map can be expanded and instance details are dynamically fetched from the knowledge base and displayed directly within the map view. The selection of instances to be displayed can be furthermore the result of a facet-based filtering.

Calendar Tab

Instances having property values with the associated datatype xsd:date can be displayed in a calendar view. As for the map view the selection of instances displayed in the calendar view can be the result of a facet-based filtering. Each item displayed is linked to the individual view of the corresponding instance.

Resource Auto Suggestion

Property Configuration

Advanced User Interface

History / Versioning Tab

This tab provides the opportunity to track, review and selectively rolled-back changes.

SPARQL Query Shell

With the SPARQL Query Shell advanced users are able to query knowledge bases with arbitrary SPARQL queries.

File / Document Manager

The File / Document Manager allows users to upload documents (e.g. PDF files). These documents get an identifier as normal resources and can be equipped with meta data as normal resources. In addition to that, these file resources can be received over the net as normal download if they have an URI which is part of the the managed namespace of Onto Wiki (e.g. Onto Wiki is installed at http://ow.example.com and the document has the URI http://ow.example.com/files/example.pdf)). The File Manager is accessible over the main menu -> Extras -> File Manager.

Extensibility

Themes

From version 0.6 on, Onto Wiki can use different than the default theme. To create a new theme, copy the directory themes/default to themes/NewThemeName.

The most important theme files are:

• css/default.css – the default style sheet, change colors and fonts here
• templates/main.php – the main screen, change overall arrangement here

Widgets

Widgets are reusable components of the Onto Wiki user interface that the user interacts with. Onto Wiki uses the Erfurt Semantic Web Application Framework for a basic set of RDF related widget. Developers can add widgets for specific relations or schema datatypes.