¶ How to submit an ontology to OLS
¶ Minimal ontology structure and annotations for a 1st version
A minimal ontology example described in the turtle syntax is described below.
This minimal example would be accepted for the POST /ontologies operation and then be available for the administrator to validate.
@prefix owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .
<http://www.orange.org/minimal-ontology> rdf:type owl:Ontology .
This first validation step ensures the ontology is valid in terms of syntax/parsing and basic structure: it should at least have a <iri> rdf:type owl:Ontology declaration
¶ Minimal SKOS/RDFS structure for a 1st version
Alternatively, a default namespace declared as below is also compliant. This is mostly only recommended for controlled vocabularies outside of OWL e.g. SKOS or RDFS vocabularies.
@prefix : <http://www.orange.org/minimal-ontology/> .
Although these minimal examples are funcionnal, they are neither practicle nor informative, please follow the recommendations below.
¶ Recommended ontology structure and annotations
The following is a recommended set of annotations that you should consider adding to your ontology, whatever its state. See https://www.dublincore.org/specifications/dublin-core/dcmi-terms/ and
- http://purl.org/dc/terms/description or http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/description
- http://purl.org/dc/terms/title or http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/title
- http://purl.org/dc/terms/creator or http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/creator
- http://purl.org/dc/terms/modified
- http://purl.org/dc/terms/issued
- http://purl.org/dc/terms/licence
- http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#versionIRI
- http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#versionInfo
A default namespace (@prefix 
and a @base with the ontology iri.
Below is an exemple ontology with this structure:
@base <http://www.orange.org/minimal-ontology/> .
@prefix : <http://www.orange.org/minimal-ontology/> .
@prefix owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .
@prefix terms: <http://purl.org/dc/terms/> .
@prefix dc: <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/> .
<http://www.orange.org/minimal-ontology> rdf:type owl:Ontology ;
dc:creator "TH" ;
dc:title "The prime ontology example" ;
dc:description "One Ontology example to rule them all" ;
owl:versionInfo "0.0.1" ;
owl:versionIRI "http://www.orange.org/minimal-ontology/0.0.1" ;
terms:issued "2024-07-15" ;
terms:issued "2024-07-20" ;
terms:licence <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html> .
<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html> rdfs:label "GNU General Public License"
¶ Additional Tests
A series of additional ontology tests are run at after the first validation step. These tests check for different soft errors or warnings relating to your ontology file.
The implementation of this test step is based on robot report. The list of checks is a subset of the following list.
A few checks are removed from the list, thus the full list is the following:
| Severity | Name |
|---|---|
| INFO | annotation_whitespace |
| WARN | deprecated_boolean_datatype |
| WARN | deprecated_class_reference |
| WARN | deprecated_property_reference |
| WARN | duplicate_label |
| INFO | equivalent_pair |
| INFO | equivalent_class_axiom_no_genus |
| WARN | illegal_use_of_built_in_vocabulary |
| INFO | invalid_xref |
| WARN | label_formatting |
| WARN | label_whitespace |
| WARN | missing_label |
| INFO | missing_obsolete_label |
| WARN | missing_ontology_description |
| WARN | missing_ontology_license |
| WARN | missing_ontology_title |
| INFO | missing_superclass |
| WARN | misused_obsolete_label |
| WARN | misused_replaced_by |
| INFO | multiple_equivalent_classes |
| WARN | multiple_equivalent_class_definitions |
| WARN | multiple_labels |
| INFO | invalid_entity_uri |
The result of these tests are :
- sent back in the ontology task response (linked in the headers of the response in the
locationfield). - attached to the ontology to be retrieved later.
- limited to a maximum of 1000 violations (errors, warnings, info combined).
An example task response with reportResult is given below:
{
"uploaderEmail" : "admin",
"createdAt" : "2024-07-15T18:01:36.702671033",
"taskType" : "ADD_ONTOLOGY",
"infoURL" : "http://localhost:8000/api/v2/tasks/1417e88b",
"endedAt" : "2024-07-15T18:01:39.664284564",
"rootDir" : "thingin_temp_dir_0907b251",
"id" : "1417e88b",
"type" : "task",
"ontologyOrigin" : "unknown",
"ontologies" : [ "http://localhost:8000/api/v2/ontologies/16e70fc4-7e8e33ff" ],
"reportResult" : [ {
"level" : "ERROR"
},
{
"level" : "WARN",
"violations" : [ {
"missing_ontology_license" : [ {
"subject" : "http://www.orange.org/minimal-ontology"
} ]
} ]
},
{
"level" : "INFO"
} ],
"status" : "COMPLETED"
}
The tests result are currently not compatible with files outside of OWL ontologies (e.g. SKOS, RDFS).
¶ Minimal and recommended ontology structure and annotations for an updated version
The requirements for an ontology update has additional requirements, to help disambiguate the different versions.
Additional annotations are required:
- owl:versionInfo predicate, if any, MUST be different
- owl:versionIri predicate, if any, MUST be different
- dcterms:modified predicate, if any, MUST be different
- if all of the above predicates are missing, the ontology file MUST at least a different predicate set (the files must differ in some way).
This means that as long as you do not manage the ontology version within the file, you can update your ontology with little care, although it is AGAINST recommendations. We highly recommend to keep your ontology metadata tidy and as exhaustive as possible, and update it systematically.
¶ Minimal and recommended SKOS and RDFS structure for an updated version
For RDFS schemas, there is no additional constraints compared to the initial file:
- the rdfs file MUST at least a different predicate set (the files must differ in some way).
For SKOS, it is required to include your SKOS vocabulary annotations in a dedicated individual, preferably at the top of your file as shown below.
If this is individual is missing or annotations are not directly attached to an indiviual with the same IRI as the default prefix, the annotation will be ignored, thus preventing their display in the metadata
and making further updates less practicle (similarly to the RDFS schemas updates).
<https:www.example.org/skos>
a skos:ConceptScheme;
# --- Metadata ---
dcterms:creator "Richard Richardson" ;
dcterms:license <https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-4-Clause> ;
dcterms:title "The SKOS prime example" ;
dcterms:type <http://purl.org/nkos/terms/thesaurus> ;
dcterms:issued "2023-01-01"^^xsd:date ;
dcterms:modified "2024-01-01"^^xsd:date .
¶ Axiomatization recommendations
There are no rules regarding your ontology axiomatisation to be accepted by the service.
However we recommend to follow good practices in ontology design, for instance refer to this article, or this paper.
Additionally, the test report can give you some hints on basic axiomatization improvements you can make to your ontology.