Seeking clarity, better documention and better examples for spreadheet import

[Simon Opper]

Hi guys

I'm seeking advice in the short term (see attached excel sheet), but in the  longer term requesting better documentation, examples and supporting material for the EDG spreadsheet importer. Particualy the column based tree template.

I've tried to work through the importer with a client and ended up being failry embarassed that what I had said was a simple straight forward process is very unclear and rather poorly documented. I wasn't able to point them to any documentation or work through with them to resolve the problems we were having.

The client is a non technical user and new to RDF but is now quite adpet at creating basic taxonomies and skos relations.

 I couldn't deciphr the documentation to get the basic World tree example to work either. There is no example template for the world example and to be honest the mapping page is very unclear as to what the various mappings and hiearchy selections do and how they perform given pre and post taxonomy data conditions in the EDG asset and spreadsheet data.

I know the importer is quite a variable beast depending on the input data and the desired results. But some more clarity on basic use is needed.

Currently it requires a lot of experimentation to try and guess the impact of various mapping selections and one exceedingly frustrating point is that the preview option invariably does not show enough triples to show an error/unintended mapping that is introduced from a given mapping selection.

This experimentation is made painful by the inability to re-edit a tempalte in EDG and we resorted to havng to take screen shots of the mapping inputs to apply changes.

From my perspective of someone who will need to advise a client on how to setup and maintain an import process which in my case will not be a one off, is that you need to be able to edit the saved templates in EDG for debugging and updating. I know these can be viewed as a spin map ontology in composer but this is beyond the clients skill level. It should be available in EDG to re-open and work with.

I've compiled some feedback from the session on the attached.

The example sheet we were attempting to import is also attached. Basically the previews of the mappings looked fine but the results always contained a circular reference (similar to what occurs in the below world example). 

using 6.3 or 6.4 why is there no "has narrower" property avaialble in the column based tree hiearchy property selection ( right hand side of screen).  It only shows "has broader" or alternatives such as "has narrower match". Does the workshet need to be expressed as broader than relations ? This isn't what the world example implies ?

To explain the case attached are some results of an attempt at the world column tree import into an asset that had a world conceptscheme. This shows that the preview of the import looks on track, but the final result includes circular references.

Many thanks in advance

Simon

[Simon Opper]

P.S.

I was able to get everything working using an ontology for the sheet and a set of sparql update queries. It was easier for me to do it this way than trying to use the tree based templates. But this isn't suitable for less technical users.

Cheers

Simon

[Tim Smith]

I have also experienced the frustration of using the importer as shared by Simon, especially the repeatability issues.  I do all of my imports as straight rdf files that I've created via Insert queries in TBC.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TopBraid Suite Users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to topbraid-user...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/topbraid-users/2e8209d2-2768-47b4-a6e9-bd1864556b14n%40googlegroups.com.

[Irene Polikoff]

All pre-built importers have one limitation - all imported resources must be of the same type. The tabular (no hierarchy pattern) is the easiest to use. It can be used to create relationships and a common pattern if you need to import resources of different types is to import the same spreadsheet multiple times with different mappings. You could also use this technique to import a hierarchy even if all resources are of the same type.

In any case, I hope the below attached presentation will help to answer Simon’s questions.

[Fan Li]

Irene, I have a related question for tabular import in EDG. In my case, I would like to match a column to SKOS concepts by either skos:prefLabel or skos:altLabel, whichever matches.

I thought I could just match by rdfs:label but it didn't work. I thought the skos:*Label => rdfs:label inference is turned on by default but maybe it is not the case?

[Irene Polikoff]

No, this is not the case.

I would try importing twice - first matching on preferable, then on altLabel OR duplicate the column and map both columns to whatever property you are using to connect concepts, but matching on the different values. This way, if it was not found based on the column 1 match on preLabel, it may be found based on the column 2 match to altLabel.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TopBraid Suite Users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to topbraid-user...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/topbraid-users/fa09277c-4769-41ba-9ce9-dcb18e9757a0n%40googlegroups.com.

[Fan Li]

Thank you, Irene.

[Irene Polikoff]

Simon,

We have updated documentation on the spreadsheet importers for 6.4. Please take a look to see if it now addresses your questions:

https://doc.topquadrant.com/6.4/importing/#Import_Spreadsheet_using_Pattern

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TopBraid Suite Users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to topbraid-user...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/topbraid-users/2e8209d2-2768-47b4-a6e9-bd1864556b14n%40googlegroups.com.