Web front end to Protege

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melbpar1
Posts: 41
Joined: 19 Sep 2012, 06:18

Hi
We are a large organisation with a number of architects from multiple business areas contributing to EA content.
We have recently deployed a production environment. As our ontology grows in size, the time it takes to load the project from the Protege client has become unacceptable. Also, due to numbers, it has become impractical to force all contributors to install the client.
Are there any plans in the Essential Roadmap or any interest from the community to build a HTML 5 front end (similar to the import utility) to avoid the need for a thick client? The web client would provide the same functionality as the Protege client but would offer a superior user experience and would minimise deployment effort

Thanks
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jonathan.carter
Posts: 1087
Joined: 04 Feb 2009, 15:44

Thanks for this.

Great to hear about how you're using Essential.
Just so I get a better picture, how long is the typical project-load-time? Is it comparable when running on a standalone workstation or is the multi-user mode significantly slower?

To answer your question, the answer is a qualified 'yes'. From both user experience and the direction of modern software deployment, a Web-based user interface is definitely the way to go.

We have been tracking the Web Protege initiative and although it works well, the user interface doesn't work in the same way as the forms in Protege 3. So, although you can browse the repository, it's even more technical-looking than Protege client!
And there isn't (or at least wasn't) a plugin framework like that of Protege client.

I think the way forward is to start a web front-end that provides easy access to make relatively straight-forward edits against the Protege server, with Protege client still lurking in the background for the more in-depth repository maintenance (and with a very much smaller user community).

And build forward from there...

In the meantime, I'm going to have a more in-depth look at Web Protege and report back.

Jonathan
Essential Project Team
melbpar1
Posts: 41
Joined: 19 Sep 2012, 06:18

Hi Jonathan
Thanks for your response.
The typical load time for stand alone is about 10 seconds. In multi-user mode, it could take up to 2 minutes.

I was not aware of the Web Protege initiative but your idea of a simplified web front-end sounds like an option. Is that in the Essential Roadmap or are users expected to develop it?

Thanks
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jonathan.carter
Posts: 1087
Joined: 04 Feb 2009, 15:44

This is something that is now on our roadmap.

I think we'll take an iterative approach, build up the capability of the web front end as required rather than trying to everything all at once.

One of the Team members had a look at Web Protege very recently and this works in a very similar way. It's a web application that connects to the Protege server to update the repository. However, this has a very OWL perspective which does not lend itself to working with the repository in the way that we do in the Essential Project and so whilst some simple content updates could be supported, things like relationship classes and the graphically-defined models are not really practical in the current Web Protege

Jonathan
Essential Project Team
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