Ontology Update

The Ontology Update service is used to update an OWL ontology existing in the OSF Web Service instance.

This service is a web service wrapper over the OWLAPI ontology library. It wraps all the needed functionalities related to updating an ontology. Most of the related API has been implemented. So we can say that web service (with the other related services) turns the OWLAPI into a web service API.

There is an important semantic distinction to do: this endpoint is about UPDATING an ontology. This means that we may be updating ontologies resources, or creating new ones. The logic is that by creating new resources (such as classes, properties and named individuals) we are updating the ontology.

This is what this web service endpoint is about. To update or create an existing resource, the requester only has to send the RDF description of that resource to update or create. If the resource is existing, it will get updated, if it is not, it will get added.

Developers communicate with the Ontology Update Web service using the HTTP POST method. You may request one of the following mime types: (1) text/xml, (2) application/rdf+xml, (3) application/rdf+n3 or (4) application/json. The content returned by the Web service is serialized using the mime type requested and the data returned depends on the parameters selected.

Version
This documentation page is used for the version 3 of this endpoint. Check at the top of this page to see the documentation pages for the other versions of this endpoint.

Usage
This Web service is intended to be used by content management systems, developers or administrators to update ontologies that are hosted on a OSF Web Service instance, and that are used to describe the named entities in the system.

This endpoint, along with the other related endpoints: Ontology Read, Ontology Create and Ontology Delete; can be seen as the brain of your OSF Web Service instance.

Web Service Endpoint Information
This section describes all the permissions you need in the WSF (Web Service Framework) to send a query to this Web service endpoint, and it describes how to access it.

To access this Web service endpoint you need the proper CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) permissions on a specific graph (dataset) of the WSF. Without the proper permissions on this graph you won't be able to send any queries to the endpoint.

Needed registered CRUD permission:


 * Create: True
 * Read: False
 * Update: True
 * Delete: False

As shown on the graph URI:


 * URI of the dataset being updated

''Note: normally, the URI of an Ontology dataset is the URL used to import that ontology in the system. The URL can be the URI of the ontology if it was resolvable on the Web, or the URL where the OWL file, containing the ontology's description, can be resolved by the server (on the web, on the file system, etc) via a URL.''

Here is the information needed to communicate with this Web service's endpoint. Descriptions of the parameters are included below.

Note: if a parameter has a default value, the requester can omit it and the default value will be used. Also, some baseline Web services may not offer other values than the default.

HTTP method:


 * POST

Possible "Accept:" HTTP header field value:


 * text/xml (structXML)
 * application/json (structJSON)
 * application/rdf+xml (RDF+XML)
 * application/rdf+n3 (N3/Turtle)
 * application/iron+json (irJSON)
 * application/iron+csv (commON)

URI:


 * http://[...]/ws/ontology/update/?ontology=&function=&parameters=&reasoner=&interface=&version=

URI dynamic parameters description:

Note: All parameters have to be URL-encoded


 * ontology. URI of the ontology; the URI of an Ontology dataset is the URL used to import that ontology in the system. The URL can be the URI of the ontology if it was resolvable on the Web, or the URL where the OWL file, containing the ontology's description, can be resolved by the server (on the web, on the file system, etc) via a URL. If you don't know what the URI is, you can always use the  function to get the list of all loaded ontologies URI.
 * function. The function name to use for this query. The complete list of function names and their descriptions is available below.
 * parameters. The list of parameters used by the function you are about to use. The parameters are split by a ";" character. The parameter and its value are defined as . This tuple has to be encoded. So, the parameters should be constructed that way in the URL:  . See the example below.
 * reasoner. Only used when  One of:
 * True (Default) &mdash; Enable the reasoner for indexing the ontology into OSF Web Service (the triple store and the full text engine)
 * False &mdash; Disable the reasoner for this query
 * interface. Source interface used for this web service query. The interface is a different way to process a query (different algorithms, different data management system, etc. The default interface is 'default'
 * version. (default: 3.0) Version of the interface to query

Available Sources Interfaces
A source interface is a way to process a web service query. Different sources interfaces can be implemented for the same OSF Web Service endpoint. Each interface will process the query differently, but all the queries to the web service endpoint will be the same, at the exception of the  parameter. Each interface shares the same API (the one defined by the web service endpoint), but their processing may differ (like using different algorithms, using different data management systems, etc.)

This is a list of the core interfaces for this endpoint. Organizations that hosts a OSF Web Service network could create their own interface and make it available to the users. However such private source interface won't be part of this list, but should be publicized by the organization.

Functions
This web service endpoint support a series of function that can be queried. All the functions are listed in the section below, along with all their parameters.

All queries are built the same way:


 * http://[...]/ws/ontology/update/ parameters: ontology=http%3A%2F%2Fsome-ontology-uri&function=saveOntology

Where:


 * ontology is the URI of the ontology to query
 * function is the name of the function to use for that query
 * parameters is a list of encoded parameters/values to give as input to that function

createOrUpdateEntity
Create or update an entity in the ontology. An entity can be anything of a class, an object property, a datatype property, an annotation property or a named individual.

Right now, the creation and the modification of an entity is simplified to writing the RDF triples describing the entity to create or update. The advantage of this method is that a system that interacts with the endpoints doesn't have to send multiple different queries to change multiple aspects of an entity. It only has to generate the code offline, and send it once to the Ontology Update web service endpoint, with the complete RDF description of the entity to update, or create, in the instance.

If an entity is being modified by some system, usually the workflow process is:


 * 1) The system send a query to the Ontology Read web service endpoint to get the current complete description of the entity to update
 * 2) The system modify the RDF description of that entity, the way it has to (by adding, removing or modifying triples)
 * 3) Once the modifications are done offline, the system send the resulting RDF document to the Ontology Update web service endpoint

That is the way to create or update any kind of entities in an ontology hosted in a OSF Web Service instance.

updateEntityUri
Update (refactor) the URI of an existing entity. The entity can be a class, an object property, a datatype property, an annotation property or a named individual.

saveOntology
When the, or the  , functions are called via this web service endpoint, the ontology is tagged with a   triple that specifies that the ontology got modified in some ways.

What this  call does, is only to remove that tag (so, to remove the tag that says that the ontology got modified).

The ontology is after saved, and persisted, in the OWLAPI instance. However, if you want your system to save a hard-copy of an ontology that got modified (to reload it elsewhere), the you system will have to perform these steps:


 * 1) Check if the ontology got modified by checking if the  triple appears in the ontology's description after a call to the Ontology Read web service endpoint for the function.
 * 2) If is has been modified, then it calls the Ontology Read endpoints again, but using the  function. Once it gets the serialization form of the ontology, the system can now save it on its local file system, or elsewhere.
 * 3) Finally it calls the  function of the Ontology Update web service endpoint to mark the ontology as saved.

There is no function parameters for this function call. The ontology to update is determined by the  query parameter.

HTTP Status Codes
Here are the possible HTTP status (error) codes returned by this Web service endpoint.

On error code and the specific error, a different message description can be issued (meaning a different error has been returned).