Ontopia

Installation and getting started

This is a guide to installing and getting started with using Ontopia. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with the basics of the host platform and of Java development. See the *What's new in this release?* document for information about this release.

5.4.0 2022-10-20

Requirements

The most important requirement is that you must have the Java Software Development Kit (SDK) version 1.8 or newer. There should be no platform dependencies in the code, so the software should run on all operating systems for which there is a supported JDK available.

We have verified that the Navigator Framework runs in Tomcat versions 7, 8 and 9. It is quite likely that the framework also works in other application servers than these, but this has not been verified.

The RDBMS backend has been verified to work with Oracle 8.1.7, 9i, and 10g, PostgreSQL 8.1, 8.2 and 8.3, MySQL 5.0, H2 Database 1.0.74 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005.

What the release contains

Ontopia has the following components:

  • The Ontopia Topic Maps Engine
    • Full-text Integration
    • Query Engine
    • Schema Tools
  • The Ontopia Navigator Framework
    • TMRAP
  • The Ontopia Web Editor Framework
  • The Ontopia Vizigator
  • DB2TM
  • The Ontopia RDBMS Backend Connector, with SQL implementation of Query Engine
  • The Ontopia Omnigator
  • The Ontopoly Topic Maps Editor

Installation

The first step in the installation is to uncompress the distribution file, which you have presumably already done, since you are reading this document. The topmost directory created by uncompressing the distribution, the file called ontopia-X.X.X.zip , will from now on be referred to as basedir.

Setting the CLASSPATH

If you want to use the Ontopia APIs to write Java software, or just run the test suite, you will have to set up the CLASSPATH environment variable. If you only want to run the Navigator Framework this is not necessary, and you can skip this section.

To set up the CLASSPATH, put the ${basedir}/lib/ontopia-engine-x.y.x.jar file in your CLASSPATH (Change x.y.z to your Ontopia version). If this does not work, or you want more detailed control over the jar files being used, please see Details about CLASSPATH setup.

Note The jar-file automatically includes the other required jar-files for you via its manifest. In practice this means that you normally need not put the other jar-files on your CLASSPATH explicitly, but they all have to be located in the same directory for this to work.

Warning There may be some Java Virtual Machines out there that do not support the new CLASSPATH jar-file manifest header. If that is the case you’ll have to add all the individual jar-files to your CLASSPATH.

Verifying

Now that you’ve set up your CLASSPATH environment variable you can verify it by issuing the following command:

java net.ontopia.Ontopia

It will run and produce the following output if it can find all the classes required:

Ontopia Topic Maps Engine [version]
Success: All required classes found.

If it fails you will get output similar to the following:

Ontopia Topic Maps Engine [version]
Class 'org.apache.log4j.BasicConfigurator' not found. Please add log4j.jar to your CLASSPATH.

The message is hopefully self-explanatory.

Testing

Since Ontopia 5.2.0, testing is automatically done during creation of the distribution. It is no longer needed to run the test suite yourself. If you are experiencing problems, please report an issue at Ontopia @ Github including:

  • a brief description of what you have done,
  • the output from the test run,
  • your entire CLASSPATH when you ran the tests,
  • what platform you ran the test on,
  • the output from the command java -version, and
  • the output from the command java net.ontopia.Ontopia.

Installing the RDBMS Backend Connector

See the The RDBMS Backend Connector - Installation Guide document for information about how to install and setup the relational database backend. Note that it’s possible to run Ontopia and the web applications without using the RDBMS backend.

Getting started

Following is a short introduction to the end-user applications that come with Ontopia.

For more information about developing with Ontopia you can find a complete list of developer documentation here.

The engine

The engine consists of an SDK and some command-line utilities, and so there is little that can be done with it apart from developing applications on top of it.

To get started with application development we recommend that you start by reading the developer’s guide. Once you have read that we recommend that you use the javadocs in ${basedir}/doc/api to learn the details of the APIs.

You can find example topic maps in the ${basedir}/apache-tomcat/webapps/omnigator/WEB-INF/topicmaps directory, which contains topic maps in the XTM 1.0, 2.0, CTM, and LTM formats.

The command-line utilities

The engine comes with a collection of command-line utilities, which can be used to perform various tasks on topic maps. The command-line options of the utilities are not given here, but explanations can be had by running the utilities with no arguments.

net.ontopia.topicmaps.cmdlineutils.Canonicalizer
This application reads in a topic map and creates a canonical representation of it using CXTM. CXTM has the property that logically equivalent topic maps will always have byte-by-byte identical canonical representations.
For more information on CXTM, see the home page.
net.ontopia.topicmaps.cmdlineutils.TopicMapConverter
Used to convert to and from different topic map syntaxes. It can read XTM 1.0, ISO HyTM, and LTM 1.3 syntax, and can export to XTM 1.0, HyTM, and LTM 1.3. It also supports importing from and exporting to RDF.
net.ontopia.topicmaps.cmdlineutils.Merger
This application reads in two topic maps, merges them according to XTM 1.0 rules, and outputs the result to a third file.
net.ontopia.topicmaps.cmdlineutils.StatisticsPrinter
Prints various kinds of statistics for topic maps to standard output.

The Web Applications

Ontopia comes with a number of useful web applications built with Ontopia already set up and configured in a Tomcat installation. The main applications are:

  • Ontopoly: The Ontopia Topic Map Editor, the user’s guide to which can be found in${basedir}/apache-tomcat/webapps/ontopoly/doc/user-guide.html
  • Ontopia Omnigator, the user’s guide to which can be found in${basedir}/apache-tomcat/webapps/omnigator/docs/navigator/userguide.html

Try out these web applications by following these steps:

Start the application server
Windows
Locate the ${basedir}/apache-tomcat/bin directory in Windows Explorer.
Double-click on the startup.bat file.
Unix
Change directory to ${basedir}/apache-tomcat.
Execute the bin/startup.sh script.

After starting the application server it will take a few seconds before the server is initialized and ready to answer requests.

If the application server fails to start correctly you may have to set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to the directory where the Java Runtime Environment is installed. This can be done either at the command-line before running the tomcat startup script, or by editing the script to insert a line setting it. See Setting JAVA_HOME for details.

Try it out

To try out Ontopia you can use any of the applications listed below. The first time you’re accessing a page it may take some time since the web application server needs to compile the JavaServer Pages. If you are able to see the front page of the application then the installation is successful. Congratulations!

Warning Internet Explorer Users: Please note that IE 5.0 may not be able to connect to the application server if you are working ‘Offline’.

Overview Page
This link takes you to an Ontopia Overview Page, which can be very useful for getting started.
The Omnigator
The Omnigator is a Navigator application which can display any topic map in a user-friendly fashion. Use this application to learn more about topic maps, to explore the example topic maps, and also to check your own topic maps. See The Ontopia Omnigator - User’s Guide for information on how to use this application.
Ontopoly
Ontopoly is a user-friendly Topic Maps editor, which can be used to create and populate an ontology.
Scripts and languages
This is a web application written specifically for the i18n.ltm topic map, to show how the Navigator Framework can be used to create ontology-specific web applications. This application is very useful for learning to use the tag libraries.
Free XML Tools
This is the beginnings of a web application for the ‘Free XML Tools’ topic map. It is used as an example in the navigator developer’s guide. The application is not complete, but you may find it instructive to complete it on your own.
Stop the application server
Windows
Close the server window(s) or run shutdown.bat.
Unix
Change directory to ${basedir}/apache-tomcat.
Execute the bin/shutdown.sh script.

Frequently asked questions

This section contains answers to frequently asked questions about Ontopia.

Why do I get Not Found (404) when accessing the Omnigator?
If you get an error message saying Not Found (404) followed by Original request: /navigator/models/index.jsp and Not found request: /navigator/views/template_no_frames.jsp when accessing the Omnigator you have used a decompression tool that truncates file names when unpacking files.
We have confirmed that WinZip version 6.3 and earlier have this problem, as does WinRar 2.90. WinAce may also have this problem. We have confirmed that WinZip 8.0 and later do not have this problem.
The solution to the problem is simply to install a newer version of the decompression tool and unpacking the distribution again.
(Windows) When I start the server the window appears for a moment, then disappears, so I can’t even
read the error messages.
There are two things you can do. If you’ve created an icon to start the server you can go into the properties of the icon, under the “Program” tab, and unset the “Close on exit” option. This will make the window stay around after the server exits, and give you time to read any error messages that may appear. (If you’re just starting it by double-clicking startup.bat, then either make an icon and set it up as described above, or try the option below.)
The other approach is to change the startup.bat so that the line near that end that now reads:
is changed to:
This will keep Tomcat from opening a new window, so if you run startup.bat from the command-line you should get the error messages there.
The server log is in ${basedir}/apache-tomcat/logs/localhost_log.<date>.txt, and it is likely to contain much detail information on errors. You can try to decipher this file to find the cause of the problem, or if that is difficult, you can just send the file to us at support@ontopia.net, and we will try to help. Note that if the file doesn’t exist it means the server has been unable to start and you should try one of the two options above to find out why.
Installing the Omnigator in another Tomcat instance
To install the Omnigator in another Tomcat instance than the one which comes with Ontopia, follow these steps:
  1. Copy all the .jar files, except ontopia-tests.jar and junit.jar, from ${basedir}/lib to ${tomcat.home}/common/lib.
  2. Copy ${basedir}/apache-tomcat/webapps/omnigator to the other Tomcat installation.

Appendix 1: Details about CLASSPATH setup

Required jar-files

Ontopia has the following jar-file dependencies. The files can be found in the ${basedir}/lib directory.

The Query Engine and the Schema Tools require no jar files beyond the ones needed for the Topic Map Engine.

Appendix 2: How to set Java properties

Java system properties are set by using a command-line argument to the java command when it is run. The command java -D<prop>=<value> ... will set Java system property <prop> to <value>.

Tomcat is usually started using the Tomcat startup scripts, and so one needs to modify these in order to be able to pass command-line arguments to the Java runtime. Below is explained how to do this on Windows and Unix:

Windows
Edit the ${basedir}/apache-tomcat/bin/catalina.bat file and insert the line below near the top of it.
set CATALINA_OPTS="-D<prop>=<value>"
Unix
Edit the ${basedir}/apache-tomcat/bin/catalina.sh file and insert the line below near the top of it.
CATALINA_OPTS="-D=<prop>=<value>"

Warning Note that by default there should be no need to specify any system properties to get Ontopia working.

Appendix 3: Setting JAVA_HOME

This section explains how to set the JAVA_HOME environment variable on Windows.

If you start tomcat from the command-line you can give the command set JAVA_HOME=c:\path\to\java before starting the application server. Please replace c:\path\to\java with the path to your Java installation (for example c:\jdk1.5.0_13), make sure that you have not accidentally put the bin sub directory into the JAVA_HOME environment variable.

On Windows NT, 2000, and XP you can also go into the control panel, select ‘System’, then click the ‘Advanced’ tab, then click ‘Environment variables’. This gives you a window where you can enter a new environment variable named ‘JAVA_HOME’, the value of which must be the directory where you installed Java.

On Windows 95/98/ME you can also edit the AUTOEXEC.BAT file in the root directory of your startup drive (usually C:) and insert a line like the following into it: set JAVA_HOME=c:\path\to\java. You will then need to reboot your computer before the change takes effect.