Ontopoly

Ontopoly’s primary purpose is to enable the manual creation and maintenance of topic maps that may be based on a variety of ontologies. In order to be able to provide the most intuitive possible user interface for such a generic application, Ontopoly is ontology-driven. This means that the forms-based interface for creating and maintaining a topic map is generated automatically from the underlying ontology and the rules that are defined for it.

For this reason, you need to create an ontology before you can edit a topic map instance in Ontopoly. Often the tasks of creating the ontology and editing the topic map instance (that is, populating the ontology) will be carried out by different people. Ontopoly is therefore divided into two main parts: the ontology editor and the instance editor. The application also has an administration interface, i.e., a page for adding metadata to the topic map (description, creator, version, etc.), validating it, etc.; and an interface for exporting to various interchange syntaxes.

Ontopoly is built as a client/server application. As a client, you use your web browser, while the server is a web server bundled with the distribution. The server-side application is built using the Navigator Framework and Web Editor Framework, which are parts of the Ontopia Knowledge Suite.

The screenshot below shows the topic representing the artist, Sir John McCartney, as it might be edited within Ontopoly. Ontopoly is available as part of the OKS Samplers free download in a time-limited trial edition. An unlimited edition comes with the Navigator and Web Editor Frameworks within the Professional and Enterprise Editions of the Ontopia Knowledge Suite.