The Ontology Manager has five menus: File , Edit , Tools , Windows , and Help . The File menu is used to create new ontologies and shut down AgentBuilder. The Edit menu is used to Cut , Copy , Paste and Delete an ontology. You can use the Tools menu to select one of the two design tools (i.e. Concept Mapper or Object Modeler). The Windows menu allows you to quickly and easily switch between the various open AgentBuilder tools. The Help menu gives you access to the AgentBuilder help system. The Ontology Manager is shown in Figure 12.
Figure 12. The Ontology Manager
The ontology tree view allows you to view user-defined and system ontologies. You can create and view any number of ontologies. Typically, the system ontologies in the ontology tree are displayed in red. This implies that they are read-only and cannot be altered. A user's personal ontologies are displayed in black. When an ontology is selected in the left panel, the right panel displays general information about the ontology and includes a short textual description of the ontology as well as information about where the ontology is located. Note that the divider between the ontology tree structure and the properties window can be moved horizontally to provide more viewing space for the ontologies.
The Ontology Manager uses the same tree structures found in other AgentBuilder tools. The ontology manager has three levels in its tree structure. The highest level is the Ontologies level, which contains repository folders, which in turn, contain the defined ontologies. The repository folders are represented in the tree by a folder icon. The ontologies are represented by a book icon. Any of the ontologies that are read-only are displayed in red text.
A new ontology can be added to your user's folder by selecting the user's ontology folder and then either selecting the New menu item under File or right clicking on the mouse. This will bring up the dialog shown in Figure 13. The properties of the ontology can be entered in this dialog box.
Figure13. Ontology Properties
Ontologies can be cut, copied, or pasted. There are two ways to use the clipboard functions for an ontology. The first way is to use the Edit menu's Cut , Copy and Paste menu items. The other method is to use the ontology's pop-up menus for cut and copy, and the repository folder's pop-up menu for paste. Whichever method is used, an ontology must be selected before a cut or copy operation. For the paste operation, a user or system repository folder must be selected. Invalid selections will be ignored. If the folder being pasted into already contains the name of the ontology being pasted, the ontology to be pasted will recursively have CopyOf prepended to its name.
The general ontology properties can be modified by right-clicking on the appropriate ontology in the tree structure and selecting the Properties... item in the pop-up menu (by right-clicking on the selected ontology).
To delete an ontology from the ontology tree structure, simply select the desired ontology and choose Delete from the Edit menu (or from the pop-up menu by right-clicking on the selected ontology). This will prompt AgentBuilder to display a dialog asking if you are sure you want to delete this ontology. If you select Yes the ontology will be deleted. If you decide that you do not want to delete the ontology, simply select either No or Cancel and the deletion operation will not be performed.
You can launch either the Concept Mapping tool or the Object Modeler tool. It is necessary to first select the desired ontology before launching either of these tools. If you launch the Concept Mapper or Object Modeler without first selecting an ontology AgentBuilder will remind you by displaying a dialog asking you to select an ontology.
To switch between different AgentBuilder windows, select the desired window in the Windows menu. This will bring the selected open window to the foreground.
The help system can be accessed using the Help menu item. The About menu item allows you to read the help information for the current tool. The Index menu item will display an index of the help system's contents. The Tutorial menu item will display the Quick Tour of the AgentBuilder toolkit. The About AgentBuilder menu item will display the AgentBuilder logo along with the version number and copyright information. The AgentBuilder Home Pag e menu item will display the home page for the AgentBuilder product.