FIBO Ontology Tools

The FIBO ontology is best viewed using a dedicated ontology tool. We include instructions here for three popular tools, Protégé, TopBraid Composer and CCM (Cameo Concept Modeler). For each of these tools, the Production and Development versions of FIBO are available. See below for detailed instructions for loading FIBO in each of these tools.

Note: FIBO makes reference to LCC (Languages, Countries and Codes) from the OMG, which includes information about these things from other standards bodies. When you load FIBO, all these tools will find these files via follow-your-nose. If you cannot reach these files on the omg.org web servers for any reason, you will see load errors for the files it couldn't find. These can be safely ignored, but you will not have details of the Languages, Countries and Codes available in your model.

Protégé

Please use Protégé version 5.2 or higher.

Protégé prefers to manage files in RDF/XML format. Follow these instructions to download a zip file of FIBO in RDF/XML and load it into Protégé.

  1. Download a zipped file of FIBO in RDF/XML format from the FIBO products site.
  2. Unzip this to your hard drive. This creates a single directory called fibo, with all of the FIBO ontologies in subdirectories.
  3. Open Protégé.
  4. Select File>Open, and navigate to the folder where you unzipped FIBO. Navigate three levels down to LoadFIBODev.rdf or LoadFiboProd.rdf (development and production, respectively), and select it.
  5. Protege will open all relevant FIBO files.

TopBraid Composer

TopBraid Composer prefers to manage files in RDF Turtle format. Follow these instructions to download a zip file of FIBO in Turtle and load it into TopBraid:

  1. Download a zipped file of FIBO in RDF/XML format from the FIBO products site.
  2. Unzip this on your hard drive. This creates a single directory called fibo, with all of the FIBO ontologies in subdirectories.
  3. Open TopBraid Composer. Create a project (File>New>Project) called spec.edmcouncil.org.
  4. Drag and drop the fibo directory from your filesystem onto the project spec.edmcouncil.org in the TopBraid Composer Navigator pane. If prompted, select "Copy files"
  5. Navigate through the fibo directory in the Navigator pane to LoadFIBODev.ttl or LoadFIBOProd.ttl files (development and production, respectively). Double-click on any of them to open all FIBO files.

No Magic CCM Cameo Concept Modeler

CCM (Cameo Concept Modeler) imports both the RDF/XML and Turtle TTL formats, and pulls the ontology into a 'UML-like' model of the ontology, which is then ready to use.

  1. Download a zipped file of FIBO in RDF/XML format from the FIBO products site.
  2. Unzip this to your hard drive. This creates a single directory called fibo, with all of the FIBO ontologies in subdirectories.
  3. Open MagicDraw with the CCM plugin installed.
  4. In MagicDraw, create a new project: File/New Project. Select "Concept Modeling Project" as the project type. Select a name for the project and click "OK".
  5. Set the catalog file; from the Options menu, select Project. Navigate in the pop-up to General/Concept Modeling find the entry for "OWL Import Catalog", and click the three dots at the right to open a file navigator. Navigate to where you unzipped FIBO, Navigate down the tree until you can select the file catalog-v001.xml.
  6. Set the Project URI Construction Strategy to "303 URI": from the Options menu, select Project. Navigate in the pop-up to General/Concept Modeling, find the entry for "URI Construction Strategy", click the drop down menu at the right and select "303 URI".
  7. Import the FIBO Master: File/Import From/OWL Ontology File, and navigate to the folder where you unzipped FIBO. Navigate to LoadFIBODev.rdf, or LoadFIBOProd.ttl, depending on your preference, and import it. MagicDraw will import all of FIBO ontologies contained in the LoadFIBO file.

Other available tools

The EDM Council is working in collaboration with many companies to offer open, easy access to FIBO content for discovery and analysis. Available now are: