What is a convenient method of shopping for RDFS/OWL vocabularies?

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#1

I'm still mostly using Google searches, http://schemaweb.info/ and random serendipity to discover RDFS and/or OWL vocabularies. I can only imagine there is a more effective, more systematic way of doing it. Anyone?

Thanks in advance!

#2

I built http://schemacache.com, though to be honest, it is not yet as good as I would like it to be.

The SPARQL endpoint for it however, may be of interest for those precise queries.

The data is all in a Talis store http://api.talis.com/stores/schema-cache (the API is documented at http://n2.talis.com )

So if anyone wants to build an alternate front-end, please feel free!

#3

I created Schemapedia to help people find vocabularies and schemas.

#4

Have you tried swoogle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swoogle) ?

#5

In case you didn't know it, you can restrict Google results to a particular file type: "filetype:owl".

#6

If you are looking in the Biomedical domain there is the Bioportal (http://bioportal.bioontology.org/) maintained by the National Center for Biomedical Ontology (http://www.bioontology.org/) which allows you find, browse vocabularies. They have links to the originating websites where you can download many of these vocabularies.

#7

In addition to kwijibo's Schema Cache, I find Falcons Concept Search very useful to look around for terms.

But the best approach is still to rely on the community's experience, for example by asking on public-lod or here on SemanticOverflow :-)

#8

I'm not sure that there is a better, more systematic way of doing it, though I agree there should be!

I have found this list useful: http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Ontologies

#9

The University of Manchester maintains the TONES Repository,as a central location for ontologies. However, I agree with the first poster that a Google search, particularly when using something like filetype:.owl or filetype:.obo often yields quite good results.

A more interesting question, by the way, would be not only how to find ontologies, but also how actively the ontology is used, whether it is being developed, has issue trachers etc is. I am not sure, that many people want to build software on, for example, the now dead results of a Master's thesis from a couple of years ago. The semantic web community/ontology community needs mechanisms to address this.....the bioontologies people already have gone some way towards providing solutions.