MMI Ontology Registry and Repository: Simple Instructions

To Convert a Vocabulary to RDF

If you have a plain text, comma- or tab-separated vocabulary, you can convert it to an RDF resource by following these steps.

• 1) Go to http://mmisw.org/ontmd/voc2rdf
• 2) Enter or paste the vocabulary into the large data entry box. (To see a simple example, click the Example button.) The check-box at lower left lets you view the vocabulary in a table.
• 3) Select a topic for your vocabulary from the drop-down Class menu. (Recommendation: Select one of the MMI topics if you aren't sure which is best.)
• 4) Click on the Convert button.
• 5) A window will appear that shows your converted vocabulary (in gray, to show it is preliminary). You may wish to review it at this point. (You can also copy it into an ontology, but this is not recommended since much of the content is preliminary, pending metadata entry.)
• 6) To submit your vocabulary to the registry, go to the next section.

To Submit a Converted Vocabulary

• 7) If you have completed the last section, you should see a prompt that says "Do you want to submit your vocabulary to the repository?" Click on the Submit button to do so.
• 8) If prompted, you will need to log in to the repository. If you do not have an account, you will need to register.
• 9) Once logged in, you should see your converted vocabulary in the Ontology tab. Click on the Metadata tab.
• 10) Enter the fields in the first (Summary) metadata section. Use the tool tips for additional help.
• 11) Click on the second (General/License/Permissions) tab to enter information about how this vocabulary should be managed in the repository. Fill out whatever fields you can. (The third tab can be ignored for now.)
• 12) Click on the Review button. This verifies that all the necessary metadata has been entered, and updates the New base URI for your ontology.
• 13) Click on the Upload button. (Click on OK.) This completes the transformation of your draft RDF file to a formal ontology, and submits it.
• 14) After a successful submission announcement, click on the Close button. You will see a URL at the top of the Metadata window. You can click on this URL (or the Resolve in HTML link, if on Safari) to view information about your ontology.

For instructions on submitting and updating ontologies, see the other side.

To Submit an Ontology

If you have an ontology that you want to manage through MMI, follow these instructions.

MMI caches the original ontology, but modifies it before distribution. The MMI Registry and Repository updates the ontology based on the metadata you enter, and updates the namespace and term identifiers (to match the Resource type and Authority). You can review the updated ontology before submitting it.

• 1) Go to http://mmisw.org/or. Click on the Browse tab.
• 2) Click on the Submit New Ontology button.
• 3) Click on the Choose File button. Select the ontology and click OK.
• 4) Click on Load Ontology. Close the pop-up that appears after a successful load.
• 5) Click on the Metadata tab. For many pre-existing ontologies, some of this metadata will be filled out.
• 6) Continue from step 10 above, updating the metadata fields before validating and submitting the ontology. The new version will be the most recent version for the ontology.

To Update an Ontology or Its Metadata

Once the ontology has been submitted, follow these instructions to modify its metadata, or submit a new version. Both changes are considered modifications, and create new versions.

When you modify the metadata or submit a new version, do not change the Resource type or Authority abbreviation. If either changes, the submission will be considered a completely new ontology.

• 1) Go to http://mmisw.org/or. Click on the Browse tab. (Direct link is http://mmisw.org/or/ontologies.)
• 2) Click on the ontology you want to update. This presents you with information about the ontology.
• 3) From this point, if you are authorized (the original ontology submitter), you can update the ontology's metadata by clicking on Edit Ontology Metadata, then continuing from step 10 above.
• 4) To replace an ontology with an updated version, obtain a current version of the ontology by either copying the contents of the window into a separate file, or separately downloading the ontology file using its URL. Make the desired changes to the ontology file.
• 5) Click on the Submit New Version button. Proceed from step 3 in To Submit an Ontology above.

To Access a Submitted Ontology

Once the ontology has been submitted, you can access it as a file, or in a browser.

• 1) Go to http://mmisw.org/or. Click on the Browse tab. (Direct link is http://mmisw.org/or/ontologies.)
• 2) Click on the name of the ontology that you are interested in.
• 3) At the top of the resulting screen, you will see two links. The first is the unique resource that represents your ontology; the second is a link to an HTML representation of the ontology.
• 4) To view the ontology classes and instances, click on the Resolve in HTML link. You should see a formatted display of terms; clicking on a term provides information about that term.
• 5) The link on the left is the actual string you could use to represent this ontology in a semantic system. To view the ontology's XML, you can enter this link into your browser (in some browsers like Safari, the ontology may be downloaded as a file).
• 6) If you want to get an actual ontology file with the appendix '.owl', append .owl to the ontology URL described in the previous step.