Ontology editor

Ontology editors are applications designed to assist in the creation or manipulation of ontologies. They often express ontologies in one of many ontology languages. Some provide export to other ontology languages however.

Decision criteria for software choice

Among the most relevant criteria for choosing an ontology editor are the degree to which the editor abstracts from the actual ontology representation language used for persistence and the visual navigation possibilities within the knowledge model. Next come built-in inference engines and information extraction facilities, and the support of upper ontologies such as OWL-S, Dublin Core, etc. Another important feature is the ability to import & export foreign knowledge representation languages for ontology matching.
Ontologies are developed for a specific purpose and application. Ensure the tool has the right interface for the information science team developing it - which could be highly technical for a help desk/decision tree system and could be a non-technical librarian or business analyst for a knowledge map over an intranet. Also make sure that the end product can be used - i.e. that the tool has an API or appropriate export capability to plug the ontology into the desired application(s).

Example editors

• a.k.a. software(Ontology, taxonomy and thesaurus management software available from The Synercon Group)
• Anzo for Excel (Includes an RDFS and OWL ontology editor within Excel; generates ontologies from Excel spreadsheets)
• Chimaera (Other web service by Stanford)
• CmapTools Ontology Editor (COE) (Java based ontology editor from the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. Supports numerous formats)
• EMFText OWL2 Manchester Editor, Eclipse-based, open-source, Pellet integration
• FluentEditor for OWL, OWL ontologies editor with Controlled Natural Language (Controlled English). Supports OWL, RDF, DL and Functional rendering, unlimited imports and built-in reasoning services.
• HOZO (Java-based graphical editor especially created to produce heavy-weight and well thought out ontologies, from Osaka University and Enegate Co, ltd.)
• Java Ontology Editor (JOE) (1998)
• KAON (single user and server based solutions possible, open source, from FZI/AIFB Karlsruhe)
• KMgen (Ontology editor for the KM language. KM: The Knowledge Machine)
• Knoodl (Free web application/service that is an ontology editor, wiki, and ontology registry. Supports creation of communities where members can collaboratively import, create, discuss, document and publish ontologies. Supports OWL, RDF, RDFS, and SPARQL queries. Available since early Nov 2006 from Revelytix, Inc..)
• Model Futures IDEAS AddIn (free) A plug-in for Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect that allows IDEAS Group 4D ontologies to be developed using a UML profile
• Model Futures OWL Editor (Free) Able to work with very large OWL files (e.g. Cyc) and has extensive import and export capabilities (inc. UML, Thesaurus Descriptor, MS Word, CA ERwin Data Modeler, CSV, etc.)
• myWeb (Java-based, mySQL connection, bundled with applet that allows online browsing of ontologies (including OBO))
• Neologism (Web-based, open source, supports RDFS and a subset of OWL, built on Drupal)
• NeOn Toolkit (Eclipse-based, open source, OWL support, several import mechanisms, support for reuse and management of networked ontologies, visualization, etc.…from NeOn Project)
• OBO-Edit (Java-based, downloadable, open source, developed by the Gene Ontology Consortium for editing biological ontologies)
• OntoStudio (Eclipse-based, downloadable, support for RDF(S), OWL and F-Logic, graphical rule editor, visualizations, from ontoprise)
• Ontolingua (Web service offered by Stanford University)
• Protégé (Java-based, downloadable, open source, many sample ontologies, from Stanford University)
• ScholOnto (net-centric representations of research)
• Semantic Turkey (Firefox extension - also based on Java - for managing ontologies and acquiring new knowledge from the Web; developed at University of Rome, Tor Vergata )
• Swoop (Java-based, downloadable, open source, OWL Ontology browser and editor from the University of Maryland)
• Semaphore Ontology Manager (Commercial ontology, taxonomy and thesaurus management software available from Smartlogic Semaphore Limited. Intuitive tool to manage the entire "build - enhance - review - maintain" ontology lifecycle.)
• Synaptica (Ontology, taxonomy and thesaurus management software available from from Synaptica, LLC. Web based, supports OWL and SKOS.)
• TopBraid Composer (Eclipse-based, downloadable, full support for RDFS and OWL, built-in inference engine, SWRL editor and SPARQL queries, visualization, import of XML and UML, from TopQuadrant)
• Transinsight (The editor is especially designed for text mining ontologies)
• WebODE (Web service offered by the Technical University of Madrid)
• OWLGrEd (A UML based graphical ontology editor)
• TwoUse Toolkit (Eclipse-based, open source, model-driven ontology editing environment especially designed for software engineers)
• Be Informed Suite (Commercial tool for building large ontology based applications. Includes visual editors, inference engines, export to standard formats)
• Thesaurus Master (Manages creation and use of ontologies for use in data management and semantic enrichment by enterprise, government, and scholarly publishers.)

External links

• The Sweet Compendium of Ontology Building Tools
• http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/07/14/onto.html Ontology Tools Survey
• Platypus [1] A semantic Wiki