OntoDL

About OntoDL

OntoDL is a language for defining structured vocabularies - from simple value sets up to complex ontologies. The editor for writing OntoDL programs is MS Word. OntoDL progams are executed by an interpreter that is implemented as a MS Word makro.

While OntoDL commands are embedded into any MS Word document, the specification of a vocabulary is also the documentation of the vocabulary. For making OntoDL look like "normal" MS Word texts, OntoDL commands can be linked to style sheets. The OntoDL interpreter implicitly executes the commands assigned to a style sheet whenever it discovers a line of text within a document that if formatted using this style sheet. By this you can e.g. advise the interpreter to consider headline hierarchies as hierarchies of concepts.

A First Example

This example gives an impression how a typical OntoDL code system definition looks like.

FHIR, CTS2, CTS2-LE and OntoDL

Learn how OntoDL fully builds upon standards and works together with the CTS2-LE terminology server.

Installation and Setup

OntoDL runs from within your MS Word. Make sure you have all required libraries properly installed.

OntoDL Core Concepts

OntoDL is two interpreter languages in one. Under the hood there is a powerful but simple OntoDL Object Language (OOL) that allows to define arbitrary complex ontologies using a small set of OntoDL statements. You may write OntoDL programs in this language but mostly you will instead rather write some small macros in the OntoDL Macro Language (OML). Such macros define how common means of MS Word like style sheets and heading levels map onto the OntoDL Object Language. E.g. with a one-line-macro you can define that a level-2-headline shall define a codesystem object in the OntoDL Object Language with the name and URI of the codesystem povided in the headline text.

Directives vs. Statements

Learn more about the two languages that make up OntoDL and how they are interlaced to simplify the definition of ontologies.

OntoDL Objects

Learn more about objects and properties and OntoDL features for customizing these to your demands.

OntoDL Tutorial

Defining Terminologies and Concepts

In this section the most important language features of OntoDL are explained. In order to make this more comprehensive, a holistic example will be used that shows how OntoDL can be used to easily define semantics-rich structured terminologies for a hospital.

• Defining a Terminology
• Refining Concept Definitions
• Using Heading Templates
• Using Custom Style Sheets

Defining Custom Properties

• Defining and Using a Custom Property
• Using the _parent Property

Using Existing Terminologies

• Using the CTS2LE Global Object
• Using Patterns
• Defining a Value Set

Defining Concept Relationships

• Defining and using a predicate-object
• Using default target systems for concept relationships

Using Objects

• Defining an untyped Object
• Assigning Objects to Attributes

More Features

• Defining Obligations
• Using Defaults
• Using Hyperlinks for Steering the Tokenizer
• Synonyms and Fully Specified Names
• Defining and Using OntoDL Functions
• Using Globally Defined Objects

OntoDL Language Reference

OntoDL Object Language (OOL)

OOL Syntax Overview

OntoDL Object Language (OOL) Statements

define

define a new OntoDL object

set

set the value of a named property of an identifiable object

default

set a default value for a named property

--predicate-->

define a concept relationship

All OOL Statements build uopn a small set of Base Types.

OntoDL Object Language (OOL) Object Types

codesystem

object representing the OntoDL definition of an ontology, terminology or value set

system

object representing an externally defined ontology, terminology or value set

concept

object representing a concept (internally or externally defined)

predicate

object representing the definition of a predicate that defines a relationship between two concepts

property

object representing the definition of a property to an object

string

object representing a text, name, URI, etc.

collection

object representing a set of objects

OntoDL Object Language (OOL) System Objects

CTS2LE

system object for configuring how OntoDL interacts with a CTS2LE terminology server

OntoDL

system object for configuring the OntoDL Interpreter

FHIR

system object for controlling how the OntoDL Interpreter transforms your document to a set of FHIR resources

OntoDL Macro Language (OML)

OML Style Sheet Directives

OntoDL.StyleName

implicit assignment of a value to the property StyleName within the definiton scope of an OntoDL object

#heading

binding of the scope of a heading to an OntoDL object definition with an implict assignment of values to properties of the defined object

#obligation

trigger the execution of a set of commands and/or directives before or after text of a defined style sheet is processed

#pattern

template-based transformation of a text that is formatted with a defined style sheet

OML Tokenizer Directives

#goto ... #return

control how the OntoDL tokenizer scans through the document

#package ... #endpackage

define a named subroutine that can be linked to an obligation