August 2009: CO-ODE has now officially finished
You should still find most of what you are looking for on the site.
But also see here for ongoing OWL work @ Manchester

OWL Tutorial: Introduction to Ontology Development and Protégé-OWL

The tutorial will demonstrate OWL using the support for this language now available with the Protégé environment. The use of these tools will be supplemented by Wizard and Visualisation software (OWL Wizard and OWLViz), also provided in the standard download available on the Protégé site. Some tutorial materials are also listed below which should provide participants with a more in-depth view of the tools capabilities.

Slides now available [ZIP]

You will need:

Please follow the steps below to install the software.

Software installation

Getting and installing Protége:
  1. Download Protégé v2.1 from the Protégé download page. If you do not already have java installed on your machine, make sure you get a version including the Java VM
  2. Make sure all previous versions of Protégé are removed
  3. When downloaded, start the installer
  4. When prompted, choose a Custom install (where you will be able to select installed components)
  5. Ensure you select the Semantic Web component set
Starting a project:
  1. Start Protégé
  2. Select "OWL Files" in the Project Format box
  3. To start an empty OWL project, press "New",
    or to use an existing OWL file (like the demo files), press "Build..." and enter (or search for) the OWL filename
Enabling classification:
  1. A reasoner must be running before the "Classify" or "Check consistency" buttons can be used, otherwise an error will be generated
  2. Download the RACER zip file
  3. Extract the executable to somewhere sensible
  4. Run the executable - which should provide a message saying "TCP service enabled on port 8088"
  5. The "Classify taxonomy" and "Check consistency" buttons can now be used
Using OWLViz (also see docs [PDF]):
  1. Download GraphViz - required libraries
  2. Components (like OWLViz) are on tabs that need to be activated, so go to the Project Menu, Configure...
  3. In the Tab Widgets tab, select "OWLVizTab"
  4. Select OK
  5. The OWLViz Tab should be visible in the main window

Reference Materials

Example pizza ontologies used in the course are available for download.

Because of the amount of material to cover it is recommended that you familiarise yourself with the look and feel of the tools.
The Protégé OWL tutorial [PDF] provides a look at the majority of the features that will be used during the session.

Some of the experiences of previous tutorials have been worked into a paper. This provides a greater level of detail into the pitfalls of modelling to support participants after the tutorial.
OWL Pizzas: Common errors & common patterns from practical experience of teaching OWL-DL [PDF]


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