[kepler-users] Issue with the Kepler Semantic Type Editor

[Shawn Bowers]

Hi Alexander,

It sounds like you might be using a (slightly) older version of Kepler.
You might want to download the current alpha release -- or else get the
latest from cvs (perferred).

The ability to add new ontologies is only minimally supported within
Kepler.  This is something we are working on, and will hopefully have
completed for the first beta release.

To add new ontologies, you must store the ontology within the
configs/ptolemy/configs/kepler/ontology directory, and edit the
ontology_catalog.xml file.  For example, if I wanted to use myOnto.owl, I
would store this file in the ontology directory, and add the entry to
ontology_catalog.xml:

  <ontology filename="myOnto.owl" library="false"/>

Setting the library flag to true will make this ontology part of the actor
library ... at least in the latest cvs version.

Once you do this, you can now use terms from myOnto for annotating actors.
Note that this approach is really for testing, and we are still looking
into appropriate ways and tools for managing multiple ontologies in a
robust way (and I'm afraid we will probably have to write such support on
our own, because there doesn't really appear to be good tools out there
for this).

Currently, the editor allows one to assign concept-annotations to the
entire actor (e.g., describing its task) as well as annotations on
individual input/output ports of the actor. These functions are provided
by different tabs in the editor gui.  It is also possible to create
"aggregate" annotations on ports, e.g., by grouping two ports into a
composite port and assigning one or more concepts to it.  The GUI also
permits property-based annotations between ports (and aggregate ports,
etc.);  however, this functionality is currently turned off ...  To add
concepts, you can either type them in by hand, or else use the concept
browser.

There are two main things that annotations are currently used for. The
first is to validate a workflow. To try this out, right-click on the
workflow canvas and select "Type-check workflow". The other main function
is ontology-based actor querying ... which is currently not connected to
the new internal kepler database manager (called the "object manager").
In the next release, this will work.

There is also an actor "org.kepler.sms.actors.MergeActor" that performs a
simple form of integration of multiple actor outputs (or EML data sources)
based on semantic annotations.  There isn't much documentation on this
actor currently, but you can try it out using "MergeActorTest.xml" under
"workflows\test\".  If you are interested in this function, I can send you
a set of slides showing how this works.  We are also currently extending
this feature/actor to support more features.

Hope this helps. If you have more questions, please let me know.

-shawn


On Wed, 4 Jan 2006, Alexander Chenet wrote:

> Hello Kepler and Ptolemy users,
>
> I have some issues regarding the Semantic Type Editor which is part of
> the Kepler software. In case you have never used the Semantic Type
> Editor: you can open it by right clicking on any actor in the Graph
> Editor window and selecting "Edit Semantic Type".  Well, here's my
> problems:
>
> 1) Adding a new ontology to the Semantic Type Editor:
>
> The list of ontologies is stored under
> KEPLER_INSTALL_DIR/configs/ptolemy/configs/kepler/ontologies/ I updated
> the index.html in that directory and put my OWL-file in the directory.
> After restaring Kepler, when opening the Semantic Type Editor again I
> get the following error:
>
> "Configuration Error! Cannot locate ontology: path_to_my_owl_file!"
>
> I found out that a Java exception is thrown in the constructor of
> org.kepler.sms.NamedOntModel but I could not find out what the problem
> really is. Does anybody have an idea where the error could come from?
> The OWL-file itself certainly is valid!
>
> 2) I could not find any documentation on how to use the Semantic Type
> Editor - except for the presentation "SSDBM2005Poster" which is part of
> the kepler 1.0.0.7 alpha distribution. Do you know of any other docs?
>
> Any help would be appreciated!
> Best regards,
>
> Alexander Chenet.
>
>
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