First Start

Index

First Start

To run Semantic Turkey, once it has been properly installed and Firefox has ben restarted, you just need to click on the icon shown below:

install

After a couple of seconds (depending on the characteristics of your computer) a window will appear.

project management

In this window you can create a new Project. For more information on how to create a project click here.For information about projects management click here

The rest of the first start section is thought for people who have just installed the Semantic Turkey Firefox Extension and want to start the ontology editor. Anyone who has already used tools such as Protege or TopBraid Composer will probably feel acquainted with the main ontology editing functionalities of Semantic Turkey

Info on URI in Ontology Management

Once Semantic Turkey has started for the first time, it's time to create a new project. For people with little or no knowledge about XML/RDF/OWL technologies, consider that the URI is just an identifier for the ontology that you will edit and populate through Semantic Turkey. It is required that this identifier conforms to URI standard format, but it does not need to refer to any physical resource available on the Web. It just represents the ontology which is being edited by you and which resides solely in your computer.

Also, you can choose among different triple store technologies (the technology which is in charge of storing and retrieving RDF data from your ontological repository). By default, Semantic Turkey is bundled with a wrapper from its ontological API to the Sesame 2 RDF framework; however, further RDF store solutions may be plugged to the main system provided that an analogous wrapper is being developed for them. Should two or more RDF triple store components be plugged to your installation of Semantic Turkey, you could use the radio buttons to select the one you prefer, otherwise, Sesame 2 is the only allowed option.

Activate the Semantic Turkey Sidebar

After you have started Semantic Turkey and chosen the baseuri, open the Firefox Tools menu, expand the “Semantic Turkey” option and select “Ontology Panel”

STPanel

Or click on the "Open Ontology Panel" icon

OntologyPanelIcon

A sidebar will open containing a tab panel showing the classes and instances view. Since your ontology will be empty when you have just created it, you will see two almost empty boxes for both the classes and individuals view

class
Class Tab in the Ontology Panel

To have a fast-check that everything worked during installation, open the property panel: it should show a list of standard owl properties which are available in your ontology (figure below)

property
Property Tab in the Ontology Panel

Import your first ontology

Note: you can skip this section if you already know what you are doing (you already have experience with Semantic Web technologies)

There is no strict need of importing an ontology for managing your ontological bookmarks; you can edit your personal ontology from scratch. However, to start from a ready-to-go example, let's import a sample ontology (you must be connected to the internet to do so).

Open the Imports Management Panel by going to Tools-->Semantic Turkey-->Imports Management or by clicking the "Open Imports Management".

importsPanelIcon

This panel (which will be described more here) should look like the one in figure below:

imports panel

Select, as shown in figure above, the option "Add Import from Web to Mirror". A dialog like the one below will appear, prompting you to insert the uri of the ontology that you would like to import, and elect a file in your file system for mirroring its content

import dialog from web to mirror

Insert the URI: http://art.uniroma2.it/ontologies/st_example

and choose a name, for example: st_example.owl, for the file which will be stored in the ontology mirror of your computer

If everything is going right, Semantic Turkey should reassure you that the ontology has been imported and an entry should appear in the Imports box of the Imports Management Panel.

Note: if you are behind a proxy, you have to set proxy preferences both in Firefox (Tools-->Options-->Network) and in the Java Control Panel. Firefox rules over normal navigation while the Java proxy settings are necessary for importing ontologies. In the future, we will probably make Semantic Turkey java components inherit Firefox proxy preferences and override those defined in the Java Control Panel

Add a prefix for your imported ontology

Now, look at the table above the Imports box, which contains mappings between namespaces of imported ontologies (and namespaces related to XML/RDF/RDFS/OWL technologies) and related prefixes. Prefixes as a short-hand notation (inside a given space, like your working ontology, for example) for addressing namespaces. So, for example, if you used the prefix stx for the namespace: http://art.uniroma2.it/ontologies/st_example a concept from st_example called http://art.uniroma2.it/ontologies/st_example#Person could be shortly refered to as stx:Person. If you do not find an entry for your namespace in the prefix-namespace mapping table, you'd better enter it manually. You can do that by pressing the button on top of the prefix-namespace mapping table, called "Add Prefix", and edit the prefix namespace mapping in the following form:

add prefix panel

it is important that you write the full namespace, that is, the baseuri plus the final # symbol, so: http://art.uniroma2.it/ontologies/st_example#

Now, if you go back to the class panel (Tools-->Semantic Turkey-->Ontology Panel), it should appear much like in the following picture:

class panel after import of the st_example ontology