Version 4.0.2 of VocBench was released in August 2018

Version 4.0.2 of VocBench was released in August 2018, and is available here

VocBench is…

a web-based, multilingual, collaborative development platform for managing OWL ontologies, SKOS(XL) thesauri, OntoLex lexicons and generic RDF datasets.

Designed to meet the needs of Semantic Web and Linked Data environments, VocBench development has also been driven by the feedback gathered from a community of users made of public organizations, companies and independent users looking for open source solutions for maintaining their ontologies, thesauri, code lists, authority resources and lexicons.

Funded by the European Commission ISA² programme, the development of Vocbench 3 (VB3) is managed by the Publications Office of the EU and is performed by the University of Rome Tor Vergata.

Interested people can learn more about VocBench by visiting its project site and by subscribing to its user/developer discussion groups.

Learn more about VocBench by reading its documentation.

A list of publications related to VocBench is also available there.

Below you will find a (pretty dense) changelog for VB 4.0 (a couple of bugfixes have followed in versions 4.0.1 and 4.0.2): 

VocBench Web App

* Improved ResourceView:

  * Enabled "Add manually" option for "notes" partition;

  * Added "Add value from another project" action in some partitions;

  * Changed the "show more" function in "show all";

  * Added a status bar (footer) that show details about the resource position.

* Enabled the possibility to create resources when enriching a property.

 

* Improved the Collaboration System:

  * Improved the setup;

  * Enabled possibility to add a resource to an existing issue (Collaboration System tool);

  * Removed from the "experimental features".

 

* Improved Sheet2RDF (no more an "experimental features").

 

* Enabled management of OntoLex projects:

  * Allowed creation of OntoLex projects (both onto-model and lexical model);

  * Added Lexicon and Lex.Entry panels in Data page;

 * Added new dedicated ResourceView partitions.

* Added Datatype panel in Data page.

 

* Introduced the new search-mode for exploring Concepts and LexicalEntries.

 

* Enabled customization of the concept tree hierarchy:

  * Enabled possibility to customize the property during the creation of a sub concept;

  * Enabled the customization of the properties on which base the tree hierarchy.

* Added a button for deprecating a resource in tree/list panel toolbar.

 

* Implemented the management of UsersGroup and their constraints on ConceptSchemes.

 

 

* Implemented the search-assisted alignment.

 

* Implemented "advanced search".

 

* Implemented "custom search" based on parameterized queries.

 

* Improved search by adding two new search modes ("exact" and "fuzzy") and a "use notes" parameter.

 

* Improved SPARQL:

  * Implemented parameterized queries;

  * Implemented the storage management of "standard" and parameterized queries.

* Implemented UI for the management of MetadataRegistry.

 

* Rearranged "Metadata Management" and "Namespaces and Imports" sections.

 

* Adopted new Extensions in place of old Plugins.

 

* Improved Settings and Configurations:

  * Implemented storage.

  * Adopted dedicated input fields in forms in order to help the user to enter suitable values.

* Enabled possibility to store and load an exporter chain.

 

* Implemented UI for RdfFormatter and Deployer in the data exporter.

 

* Added importer and lifter for zThes format.

 

* Improved UI for changing the system administrator and email configuration.

* Enabled the change password feature.

 

* Enabled the possibility to change the credentials of remote repositories.

* minor bug-fixes.

 

As usual, for people migrating from a previous version of VocBench 3, it suffices to:

  • Keep the SemanticTurkeyData (*see below about Semantic Turkey Server) directory (you might want to make a backup just in case anything happens, even though the system has been extensively tested for migration)
  • Consider that some migration routines will make the data directory not entirely compatible with prior versions of VocBench
  • Remove the previous distribution (directory semanticturkey-x.y) and replace it with the new one inside the vocbench3-4.0.0-full.zip archive   

If using an external triple store, replace the old st-changetracking-sail-3.0.jar file located in the lib directory of the triple store with the new one: st-changetracking-sail-4.0.jar, that can be extracted from:

/semanticturkey-4.0/system/it/uniroma2/art/semanticturkey/st-changetracking-sail/4.0

For developers willing to recompile the project:

all of the dependencies of VocBench based on other software written by The VocBench team:

·        semantic-turkey (4.0.2):        

http://semanticturkey.uniroma2.it/        

https://bitbucket.org/art-uniroma2/semantic-turkey   

·        coda (1.6):            

http://art.uniroma2.it/coda/            

https://bitbucket.org/art-uniroma2/coda

·        lime (0.3):        

http://art.uniroma2.it/lime/           

https://bitbucket.org/art-uniroma2/lime-api        

·        sheet2rdf (2.1):    

http://art.uniroma2.it/sheet2rdf/  

https://bitbucket.org/art-uniroma2/sheet2rdf

·        maple (0.0.1):    

http://art.uniroma2.it/sheet2rdf/   

https://bitbucket.org/art-uniroma2/sheet2rdf

have already been committed to Maven Central, so they may choose what to re-build and what to take as-is from the dependencies

*SemanticTurkey Server

 * Update to Apache Karaf 4.2.0

 

* Update to RDF4J 2.2.4

  * Integrated MAPLE (http://bitbucket.org/art-uniroma2/maple) for supporting alignment processes

  * Implemented support for semi-automatic alignment to local or remote resources on the Web

* Creation of a Metadata Registry and its related editor

* Extended support for OWL2

 

* Support for management of datatypes

* automatic creation of an owl:Ontology resource when this is not available

 * Enabled the refinement of label type when creating/linking a skosxl:Label

 

* Implemented the management of User Groups, their constraints on ConceptSchemes and their introduction in the property defaults chain

 

* Enabled the possibility to specify different subproperties of skos:broader and skos:narrower properties for painting the concept tree and also whether to use their subproperties and to store this setting as a default for users belonging to a group

* Various improvements to the OntologyManager component (e.g. core vocabularies are no longer deleted when an explicit import of them is removed)

 

* Various improvements to the change tracker Sail (e.g. possibility to query the version of the Sail)

* Enabled the possibility to edit the credentials for the repositories associated with a project

 

* New Extension Management framework (partial release)

 

* Introduced Advanced Search: a search with different constraints that can be setup by the user through a dedicated UI

 

* implemented the fuzzy search

* SPARQL queries/updates now can be stored

 

* SPARQL parameterized operations: possibility to store the operations with preassigned/described parameters,

so that these can be run through a form by non-SPARQL-savvy users

* Custom Search (end-user customized search based on stored SPARQL parameterized queries) 

* Support for the W3C OntoLex-Lemon Model

  * Browsing extended to connected local projects and to the Linked Open Data through http dereferenciation or SPARQL querying (depending on dataset availability, as stored in the Metadata Registry)

* Improvements to the Load Data:

 

    * possibility to load the data from some specific sources instead of simply uploading it

    * possibility to lift data from a (usually) non-RDF format to RDF

    * introduction of RDF transformers for refactoring the data before loading it

* Improvements to the Export:

 

    * possibility to reformat the data to a (usually) non-RDF format

    * possibility to deploy the (optionally reformatted) data somewhere, instead of simply downloading it

    * renamed the export filters into the new RDF transformers for refactoring the data before exporting

* New concrete deployers/loaders:

 

    * SPARQL 1.1 HTTP Graph Store API Deployer/Loader

    * HTTP Deployer/Loader   

    * SFTP Deployer/Loader

* Implemented RDFLifter and ReformattingExporter for the zThes format

 

* Changes and improvements to the Collaboration System:

 

    * enabled possibility to add a resource to an existing issue

    * improved JIRA project creation from ST and assisted connection to an existing one 

* Added support for the change password feature

* Added the new role "lurker" to the system roles

 

* Improved the configurations of the system e-mail sender

* Improvements to Sheet2RDF

 

* Improved some ICVs

* Bug fixes

Related:

August 2018: AGROVOC thesaurus moved to VochBench3If you need more information about AGROVOC, just contact us at [email protected]

AGROVOC recommended as a Common Agricultural Data Standard for Data Sharing Context to accelerate Data-Driven Agriculture Development in Cambodia and Nepal

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