AOWLN Visualiser is a prototypical software to visualise Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) using our proposed graphical notation AOWLN (Aided OWL Notation). The visualiser is written in Java and has been implemented as a plugin for the open source ontology editor Protégé. AOWLN Visualiser uses Graphviz to create and display graphs.

For citation of AOWLN Visualiser, please refer to our publication: Nguyen J, Geyer J, Farrenkopf T, Guckert M. (2018) Aided OWL Notation (AOWLN): Conceptual Modelling and Visualisation of Advanced SWRL Rules, IC3K 2018, 10th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management, Seville, Spain

Download our demo.owl available in this repository and try the plugin in Protégé.

To get started with the plugin please follow instructions:

There are two options to download the plugin. You can find the latest version of the plugin within the Protégé Ontology editor using the auto-update function, which checks for available plugins. Older versions of the plugin are be available on this Github Repository (Kite-Cloud/AOWLN). Under "releases" you will find all published versions which have to be manually added to the "plugins" folder of your Protégé.

Furthermore, the plugin requires an external jar file aowln-image-engine.jar which is available in the setup folder of this repository. Please download this jar to a local folder. This external jar contains the rendering engine for visualisation of the rule graphs.

To open the installed plugin in Protége navigate to: Window -> Tabs -> AOWLN-Tab

When using the AOWLN Tab in Protégé for the first time you will be requested to enter a local path to the external jar aowln-image-engine.jar that has been previously downloaded in step 1. To continue you must provide a valid path to the jar. Use the File-Explorer to select the jar file and click on the Continue button.

The plugin is now ready and can be used to visualize SWRL rules in the ontology. A dropdown menu located at the top of the plugin provides a list of all available rules in the ontology. Press the Select button to start the visualisation process. In previous versions the plugin only visualised SWRL rules that comply to the rule convention presented in AOWLN. The convention requires each rule fragment (rule head or rule body) to explicitly define concepts of variables used in properties or builtins of that specific rule fragment. We have now removed this limitation with plugin version 1.0.0 which should make it possible to visualise all types of SWRL rules. However, to ensure best comprehensibility of visualised rules we recommend making use of our proposed rule convention.

We have noticed that the aggregation of multiple builtins into a builtin collection has created a limitation causing a loss of transparency. Hence, we have dissolved the builtin collection and now distinguish between bound and unbound builtins in the visualisation. Bound builtins are listed as labels at the associated edges. Unbound builtins are now illustrated using the diamond symbol.

AOWLN Visualiser is an open source product licensed under GPLv3