The Essential Project Forum

Hi folks

I'm new to the forum here. We are looking at installing the open source version of Essential in order to use it in a 1st client project (evaluation on a real project really). However, while there are installation instructions for each of the components, it isn't clear to me what the overall architecture of the product is. I had assumed that it was all web-based as the cloud version must be, but the Ontology Editor component makes me think different.

So, here are my questions:

• Is there a deployment architecture diagram anywhere that I am simply missing?

• If not, is this all web-based with the exception of the ontology editor?

• Do I need the ontology editor installed if I don't want to extend the meta-model?

thanks in advance!

Hi Andy,

Protege, the ontology editor, allows you to capture your data and populate against our meta model. That holds the instances and their relationships.

When you publish, there is a tab in Protege, if you install the Essential components, that publishes a data file that is used in the web browser when rendering views.

The import utility can used to bulk load data is web based.

The Protege bit is not web-based in Open Source.

To extend the meta model you will need Protege and you can add classes/slots as you like. You need to update any views to pick those slots or classes up

Does that help?

Hi @JohnM

Thanks for the reply. This (sort of) helps.

So from what you have said, I need the Ontology editor to populate my model (ie add additional data to the model after the initial import).
However, the initial import (bulk) can be done via the web app - correct?

Having never used it before, does Protege have both a client and server component and how do I configure the client to talk to the server?

I am thinking of hosting my instance in a cloud VM, hence these questions

thanks in advance
Andy