Validating an Ontology

You can validate the consistency of an ontology. Ontology Editor supports the following validations:

Check semantic consistency (OWL-DL)
  • RDF syntactic validation
  • RDF and RDFS consistency validation:
    • Triple elements definition.
    • Classes derivation
    • Property ranges and domains restrictions
  • OWL Structural and Consistency validation:
    • OWL structural specification
    • Classes derivation and disjointness
Check properties constraints (SHACL)
  • Cardinality: minCount, maxCount
  • Types of values: class, datatype
  • Values: in, hasValue
  • String based: pattern, flag

SHApes Constraint Language allows you to validate data graphs and shapes graph. A shape can specify the severity of the validation to be done. Shapes can only be defined through imported ontology.

Note: Make sure you define the SHApes in the .ttl file before importing your ontology.

  1. Click on the Ontology you want to validate.
  2. Click in the top right-hand corner.
    The Validate Ontology dialog box appears.
  3. Select Check properties constraints (SHACL) and/or Check semantic consistency (OWL-DL) and click Validate Ontology.

    If the validation detects irregularities:

    • a validation panel appears at the bottom of the widget
    • the ontology ID is displayed with

  4. Explore the validation panel:

    Click at the top of the panel to collapse and click to display it.

    Problems (prefix:)

    Switch between one or more tabs depending on the number of ontologies validated.

    To remove a tab, click on the tab then clickClose.

    Drop-down list
    To sort results according to the issue type, select an option from the list.
    Relaunch the validation
    Click to relaunch the validation.
    Columns
    • Resource: the resource on which a problem was detected.

      Click the resource line to access it. The resource details have:

      • the number of errors, warnings and infos
      • incorrect fields highlighted (errors in red, warnings in orange, infos in blue).
    • Path: the property of the resource concerned by the problem.
    • Description: the description of the problem.
    • Type:
      • Error: Inconsistency that must be fixed before pushing
      • Warning: Not blocking, but worth fixing for better system functioning
      • Info: Not blocking. Includes recommendations
    • Validator: the validator used to detect the problem. It can be SHACL or OWL.

    To rearrange the columns order, move the columns' headers.

    To sort the results, click the header of the column you want to sort.

    To group results by Resource, Path, Type and/or Validator, drag and drop the column in the field above. To clear the grouping, click and Clear All.