TODE : A Dot Net Based Tool for Ontology Development and Editing
Noman Islam1, Muhammad Shahab Siddiqui2, Zubair A. Shaikh3
Center for Research in Ubiquitous Computing
National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences
Karachi, Pakistan
1
noman.islam@nu.edu.pk; 2shahab.siddiqui@ieee.org; 3zubair.shaikh@nu.edu.pk;
Abstract Semantic Web is an initiative towards transforming
the current world-wide-web such that contents over the web
can be understood and processed by machines. Ontology is
one of the vital components of semantic web. It provides the
vocabulary of a particular domain so that web contents can be
easily comprehend by machines. Over the years, a number of
tools like Protg, WebODE and Ontolingua have emerged
that assist ontology developers in the creation of ontologies.
Most of these tools have been developed in open source
languages while Dot Net community is slow to react. The
developers of open source languages are actively working on
creation of supporting tools like reasoners, consistency
checkers and visualizers. Due to the unavailability of any Dot
Net based ontology editing tool, we dont see similar type of
activity in Dot Net community. We believe that a Dot Net based
ontology editor can work as a catalyst and will trigger further
development of supporting software in Dot Net environment.
In this paper, we have proposed a Dot Net based tool for
ontology development and editing called TODE. The tool
provides a simplified, W3C compliant, web based environment
for ontology creation.
Keywords: TODE, Ontology Editor, Dot Net based tool,
Semantic Web, Profile Ontology
I. INTRODUCTION
The term Semantic Web has been coined by Tim
Berners-Lee[1]. It is a vision that extends the capabilities of
internet such that contents and resources over the web have
precise meaning. Due to the meaning associated with web
objects, machines will be able to understand the stuff over
the web. Semantic Web is not a single technology and it
comprises of a number of components including ontology
languages (RDF/RDFS[2], OWL[3], etc.), editing tools
(Protg[4], Ontolingua[5], etc.) and standards (WSMO[6],
OWL-S[7] etc.). Ontology plays an important part in
realization of semantic web. It is a collection of concepts,
attributes, relationships and axioms. Many tools have
emerged over the year which helps in ontology creation and
maintenance. Ontology editor assists the ontology developer
by providing a number of facilities like a friendly user
interface for ontology creation, a collaborative environment
where multiple users can work together and support for
reasoning and inferencing etc. Ontology editor also provides
facility to import and export ontology in languages like RDF,
DAML, OWL and OIL. In addition, some ontology editors
support well defined methodology for ontology creation. For
example, WebODE[8] is a well-known web based ontology
editor that supports an ontology development methodology
called Methontology[9] for ontology development.
Despite the availability of a large number of ontology
editing tools, it is observed that no tool is developed in Dot
Net Environment. The availability of a tool in Dot Net
Environment gives rise to development of supporting tools,
visualizers, plug-ins, reasoning and inferencing tools. Due to
un-availability of Dot Net based ontology editing tool, the
Dot Net community is quiescent in this active area of
research, while the open source community is very active in
this area. For example, Protg is a Java based tool, which
has been extended further through a large number of plug-ins
like tools for Natural Language Processing, reasoning and
project management[10]. Realizing this demand, we
developed TODE (Tool for Ontology Development and
Editing), which is a Dot Net based ontology editor.
In next sections, we will discuss our proposed ontology
editing tool. First, related work in this area will be discussed
and then we will move towards the discussion of its
architecture. We will also discuss the implementation
details. Finally, the paper will be concluded with future
directions.
II. RELATED WROK
Over the last few years, a number of ontology editing
tools have emerged that assists the ontology developers
towards the development of ontology by providing a user
friendly environment for ontology creation and management.
These tools make the job easier for ontology developers by
providing a well-defined methodology for ontology creation,
support for reasoning, inferencing, visualization and
collaboration etc. [11],[12],[13] and [14] has provided a
comparison of these ontology editing tools.
Protg[4] is a well known and probably the most stable,
desktop based ontology editing tool developed by Stanford
University. It provides support for RDF(S) and OWL. In
addition, the tool can be easily extended via its plug-in
feature. Hence, ontology reasoners like Pellet can be attached
with this tool. OntoEdit[15] developed by Ontoprise, is a
multilingual ontology editor. It has the support for RDF(S)
and DAML+OIL. In addition, the tool provides a well
defined methodology for ontology creation. Isa Viz[16] is a
desktop based ontology editor that provides visual graph
based interface for ontology creation based on RDF models.
Ontolingua[5] is a ontology tool developed by Stanford
University that supports a number of ontology languages like
 TABLE I. A COMPARISON OF ONTOLOGY EDITING TOOLS
Tools Free Open Dot Net Import Export Inferencing MODEL
Source and Web Languages Languages Reasoning Ontology storage / retrieval
Based Tools
Notifies the view about
Protg RDF, OWL RDF, OWL,
FLogic, changes in model
CLIPS
OntoEdit DAML + DAML + OIL,
(Free) OIL, RDFS RDFS
Differential RDFS, DAML+OIL, VIEW CONTROLLER
Ontology OWL OIL, RDFS,
Editor (DOE) OWL DESKTOP WEB
MOBILE Application
IsaViz RDF/XML, RDF/XML, N-
N-Triples Triples Behavior
Clients Interaction with
Ontolingua DAML+OIL, DAML+OIL,
KIF,CLIPS KIF, CLIPS model and view
Altova N-triples, N-triples, Presentation of ontologies based on
Semantic OWL, RDF OWL, RDF the capability of client
Works and RDFS and RDFS Interaction with model and controller
WebODE RDF(S), CLIPS,
DAML+OIL, DAML+OIL, Figure 1. Architecture of TODE
UML, OWL UML, OWL
TopBraid RDBMS, OWL,RDF,
Composer OWL, RDF XML III. TODE - A DOT NET BASED TOOL FOR
Morla RDF, OWL RDF,OWL ONTOLOGY DEVELOPMENT AND EDITING
Hozo RDF, OWL OWL, RDF
(subset) Fig 1 shows the generalized architecture of TODE (Tool
TODE RDF, OWL- RDF, OWL- for Ontology Development and Editing). TODE is designed
Lite, N-3, Lite, N-Triple,
RDBMS, N-3, RDBMS
based on Model View Controller Architecture, which is
N-Triple, suitable for further extension for other clients without
making significant changes in business logic. The View
DAML and RDF(S). Altova Semantic Works[17] is a Component is responsible for handling all the presentation
commercial ontology editing tool that provides support for logic. At the presentation layer, there can be different types
OWL and RDF and also has visual features like syntactic of clients i.e. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
and semantic error checking and context sensitive help. Application, Java Applet, J2ME Application etc. The
WebODE[8] proposed by University of Madrid, is a web controllers job is to manage the interaction between the
based tool that provides a multi-user collaborative model and view. All client requests will be received by
environment for ontology creation and editing. Topbraid controller that forwards its requests to Model, which contains
Composer[18], developed by Top Quadrant is an enterprise the business logic. The business logic component handles all
level modeling software for ontology creation. The tool is the necessary tasks required for ontology creation and
fully compliant with W3C recommendations. OBO-Edit[19] maintenance.
proposed by Berkeley University, provides an easy to use Fig 2 shows the web-interface of TODE. TODE provides
ontology editing feature along with a built-in-reasoner and an easy-to-use interface for modeling any domain knowledge
search tool. The tool is optimized for biological ontology through the use of hierarchy of classes, their attributes,
formats. Hozo[20] developed by Osaka University is a relationships and instances. Ontologies can be created easily
multilingual ontology editor that provides distributed through a well-defined methodology that can be exported
development of ontologies and also provides tool for further to a number of languages like RDF, OWL-Lite, N-
ontology exploration i.e. Conceptual Map Generation. Triple, N-3, RDBMS etc. To simplify the ontology creation,
Table 1 provides a comparative study of some of the a one-tabbed, AJAX based and consistent web interface is
most popular ontology editing tool. We can easily conclude provided for ontology creation. This is in contrast to existing
that most of the ontology editing tools has been developed in ontology development tools that provides a multi-tabbed or
languages like C/C++ or Java. None of the existing tools multi-page interface for ontology creation. To develop a
have been developed in C#. In addition most of these tools simplified web-based interface, we have followed all the
are desktop based like Protg, Altova Semantic Works. Human Computer Interaction (HCI) recommendations of
Ontolingua though is developed for web-based environment W3C that are required for developing a user friendly web
but provides a difficult multi-page interface for ontology site.
creation. Realizing the issues associated with currently
available ontology editors, we proposed TODE (Tool for IV. IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS
Ontology Development and Editing). It is a Dot Net based, The implementation aspect of this project requires
W3C compliant, web based ontology editor that provides a addressing several important issues. The available ontology
simplified and simple interface for ontology creation. It is API in Dot Net environment is OWL-Dot Net API which is
based on AJAX hence it is very efficient and can work for not matured enough. To handle this issue, we selected JENA
low-bandwidth clients.
 Classes
Properties
Instances
Content Pane that
loads different
pages of editor
Download
Ontology in
different formats
Figure 2. Web Interface of TODE
library[21]. It provides a comprehensive set of Java classes
that can be used for ontology creation, manipulation,
reasoning, inferencing and support for ontology languages
like RDF and OWL. Since, JENA is developed in Java; it
cant be directly used in Dot Net and we need to convert
JENA code into Dot Net code. The IKVM Conversion
Utility[22] solves this problem by providing a console based
environment for converting any Java class to Dot Net library.
All business logic has been implemented in Visual C# and
MS SQL Server has been used as a backend database for
maintaining ontology repositories. ASP .NET and AJAX
was selected for the development of view component of
TODE. Telerik Tree Control[23] was also selected to further
simplify the presentation of the application.
Figure 3. TODE Ontology Development Process
V. CREATING A PROFILE ONTOLOGY IN TODE
Fig 3 shows the process of ontology development to be
used in TODE. In this section, we are going to discuss how
to create ontology in TODE, using a case study of Profile
ontology[24], which was previously created in Protg. The
profile ontology models concepts and attributes related to a
user
A. Metadata Specification
The first step in the creation of the ontology is to define
the metadata related to ontology. Fig 4a shows how to
provide metadata specification in TODE. TODE requires the
ontology developer to specify ontology name, its URI and
short description of the ontology.
B. Scope Determination
The next step in ontology creation is to identify the scope
of ontology, which can be identified by considering
following questions:
What is the domain of ontology?
For what purpose ontology will be used?
Who is going to use this ontology?
In case of Profile ontology, we need to consider if:
Ontology is limited to employees only or any kind of
user can use it
What transactions a user is performing? Whether
Financial and educational transactions are included or
not
Should the ontology cover all other aspects of a user?
Once the scope of the problem is identified, it can be
written in few lines. In case of profile, we can write the
following statement:
Users have explicit and implicit profiles for their
identification, preferences, transactions, socio-economic
and interaction characteristics to be handled properly.
 a) Meta Data Specification
d) Specifying Details of Data Type Properties
Figure 4. Creating an Ontology in TODE
C. Conceptualization
The next step is to identify the concepts of ontology. The
conceptualization begins with identification of nouns from
the statement of scope written in previous step. These nouns
serve as concepts for ontology. Furthermore, generalization
and specialization of concepts are done. In profile example,
we can identify following concepts from our scope: Explicit
Profile, Implicit Profile, Identification Profile, Transaction
Profile, Preference Profile, Socio-economic Profile,
Interaction Profile, etc.
The concepts of Explicit and Implicit Profiles in the
profile ontology[24], can be generalized by identifying sub-
classes of Identification, Transaction, Preference, Socio-
economic and Interaction Profiles, which can be seen in Fig
4b.
D. Define Properties
In the next step, object properties among the concepts are
identified. For example, in the profile ontology[24], we can
identify an object property between user and profile. Also,
b) Creating Concepts c) Adding Data Type Property
e) Creating Instances
attributes of the concepts are identified. These concepts
become the data type properties. In our profile ontology, we
can identify name as an attribute of identification profile,
bank details for Transactions, etc. Fig 4c and 4d shows, how
data type properties are specified in TODE in the data type
property section.
E. Create Instances
In this step, the instances of the concepts are identified
and created. Fig 4e shows how this will be done in TODE.
VI. CONCLUSION
We have developed a Dot Net based ontology editing
tool TODE. The tool provides the facility to ontology
developers to create ontologies in a simplified way using a
well defined methodology and an easy-to-use GUI. The
proposed tool is expected to incite further research and
development. For example, the Dot Net community can
extend this tool further by developing plug-ins, reasoners etc.
fro this tool. Since, the application is designed based on
MVC architecture; the mobile based client for TODE can be
developed and easily be plugged into TODE application. As
a proof-of-concept, we show step-by-step development of
our already developed profile ontology for Community
Algorithm.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to thank Higher Education Commission,
Pakistan for the support of this research work. We would
also like to acknowledge Syed Haris Izhar, Mubasshir
Ismail and Muhammad Kalim from National University of
Computer and Emerging Sciences, Karachi for their
participation in the implementation part of this research.
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