Home

Awesome

Logo

Chowlk Converter

Tool to transform ontology conceptualizations made with diagrams.net into OWL code.

The conceptualizations should follow the <a href="https://chowlk.linkeddata.es/notation.html">Chowlk visual notation</a>. Please visit the specification for more details.

Citing Chowlk: If you used Chowlk in your work, please cite the ESWC paper:

@InProceedings{10.1007/978-3-031-06981-9_20,
author="Ch{\'a}vez-Feria, Serge
and Garc{\'i}a-Castro, Ra{\'u}l
and Poveda-Villal{\'o}n, Mar{\'i}a",
editor="Groth, Paul
and Vidal, Maria-Esther
and Suchanek, Fabian
and Szekley, Pedro
and Kapanipathi, Pavan
and Pesquita, Catia
and Skaf-Molli, Hala
and Tamper, Minna",
title="Chowlk: from UML-Based Ontology Conceptualizations to OWL",
booktitle="The Semantic Web",
year="2022",
publisher="Springer International Publishing",
address="Cham",
pages="338--352"
}

How to use the tool

You have several options to use this tool.

1. The web application:

  1. Go to https://chowlk.linkeddata.es/ web application.
  2. Download the Chowlk template.
  1. In diagrams.net go to File > Open Library from > Device ...
  2. Select the library downloaded.
  3. Make your conceptualization using the blocks that will appear on the side bar.
  4. Download the diagram in xml format.
  5. Drag and drop your diagram in the Service dropping area and download your TTL file.

2. The API:

The following command line will return the ontology in Turtle format.

curl -F data=@path_to_diagram/diagram.xml https://chowlk.linkeddata.es/api

where path_to_diagram can be a relative path (e.g. diagrams/diagram.xml) or an absolute path (e.g. /home/user/diagrams/diagram.xml).

The service will return the following dictionary:

{
  "ttl_data": "@prefix ns: ...",
  "new_namespaces": {"ns1": "https://namespace1.com#", "ns2": "https://namespace2.com#"},
  "errors": {"Concepts": [{"message": "Problem in text", "shape_id": "13", "value": "ns:Building Element"}],
             "Attributes": [{"message": "Problem in cardinality", "shape_id": 45, "value": "ns:ifcIdentifier"}]},
  "xml_error_generated": true,
  "xml_error_file": "<mxfile ...",
  "warnings": {"Base": [{"message": "A base has not been declared. The first namespace has been taken as base"}]}
}

{
  "message": "Some message related to the problem",
  "shape_id": "An integer id that identify the problematic shape in the diagram",
  "value": "the actual text related with the shape"
}

{
  "message": "Some message related to the problem",
  "shape_id": "An integer id that identify the problematic shape in the diagram",
  "value": "the actual text related with the shape"
}

3. Running it from docker:

Copy the project:

git clone https://github.com/oeg-upm/Chowlk.git
git checkout webservice

Docker:

  1. Intall and run Docker Desktop
  2. Open a command line located in the Chowlk repository and execute:
docker compose up
  1. Open a web browser and go to localhost:5000

4. Running it from source:

Copy the project:

git clone https://github.com/oeg-upm/Chowlk.git
git checkout webservice

Install python 3.12.6

Requirements:

pip install -r requirements.txt

To convert a diagram:

positional arguments:

diagram_path          the path where the diagram is located

output_path           the desired location for the generated ontology

options:

-h, --help            show this help message and exit

--xml_error_path XML_ERROR_PATH            the desired location for the xml file with the marked errors found in the diagram

--type TYPE           ontology or rdf data

--format FORMAT       file format: ttl or xml

python converter.py path/to/diagram.xml output/path/ontology.ttl --type ontology --format ttl

python converter.py path/to/diagram.xml output/path/ontology.ttl --xml_error_path output/path/error_xml.xml --type ontology --format ttl

python converter.py path/to/diagram.xml output/path/ontology.xml --type ontology --format xml

python converter.py path/to/diagram.xml output/path/ontology.xml --xml_error_path output/path/error_xml.xml --type ontology --format xml

To run the app locally:

python entrypoint.py

Publications

Contact