RE: Best open-source ontology/vocabulary visualization tool?

Harry,

When I was the integration PM for the DAML program I had a lot of trouble
explaining the concept of a DAML ontology to potential DoD adaptors (same
thing later with an OWL ontology). So, I developed VisioDAML (later
converted to VisioOWL) to allow for a graphical representation of the XML
syntax. I felt it was important to make the graphical representation an
exact one-to-one match to the XML syntax to reduce any potential confusion
between the domain experts (who would be working with the graphical
representation) and the actual coders (who would be implementing the XML
syntax for execution). I used Microsoft Visio as the drawing tool because I
had a copy and it was probably the best choice at the time. Since then there
have appeared several web-based drawing tools that might make a
better/cheaper choice to use, but there doesn't seem enough demand to redo
the drawing tools. A number of researchers have used VisioOWL in papers and
other publications as the way to express their ontological concepts. It is
open source and you can download it at http://semanticsimulations.com. There
are other options for graphical representation of ontologies, but I am still
a believer in the value of a one-to-one exact relationship between the XML
syntax and the graphical representation as I have seen examples when the
original XML syntax coders saw their concepts in the graphical form and
realized they had made conceptual errors that weren't apparent from perusal
of the XML syntax.  

John

-----Original Message-----
From: Harry Halpin [mailto:hhalpin@ibiblio.org] 
Sent: Monday, January 19, 2015 4:11 PM
To: Semantic Web
Subject: Best open-source ontology/vocabulary visualization tool?

Quick question - what is the best open-source best (or a web service) to
visualize, preferably as a tree, an existing RDF(S) vocabulary or OWL
ontology?

There seems to be lots of papers, but little I can find in terms of
functional tools!

  yours,
      harry

Received on Monday, 19 January 2015 22:33:31 UTC