Capabilities by format¶
Latest tagged: v0.26.2 — matrix truth: Supported formats · What ships today.
One-page view of what each format can do in OntoCode / OntoCore. Prefer this when deciding whether to keep Turtle, OBO, or Protégé-style XML.
Matrix¶
| Capability | Turtle (.ttl) | OBO (.obo) | RDF/XML (.owl/.rdf) | OWL/XML (.owx) | JSON-LD / NT / TriG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Index / browse / SQL / SPARQL | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (browse/query) |
| Entity Inspector edit | Yes | Yes | Yes (v0.21+) | Yes (v0.21+) | No |
ontocore patch | Yes | Yes | Yes (v0.21+) | Yes (v0.21+) | No |
| Create / delete entities | Yes | Limited OBO term ops | Yes (core ops) | Yes (core ops) | No |
| Manchester apply (rich class expressions) | Yes (richest) | No | Limited (named ops via patches) | Limited | No |
| HasKey / DisjointUnion / RBox / ABox (v0.22) | Yes | No | Yes (mutate / re-serialize) | Yes | No |
| Refactor apply (rename, merge, replace) | Yes | Yes¹ | Yes¹ | Yes¹ | No |
| Refactor apply (move, extract, ontology merge, flatten/cleanup) | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Manage Imports (add/remove) | Yes | — | Yes | Yes | No |
| Semantic re-serialize on save | No (span surgery) | Stanza-preserving | Yes (whole document) | Yes | — |
| Protégé byte-identical layout | N/A | N/A | No | No | — |
¹ Semantic remap + re-serialize (XML ADR-0021) or OBO id/reference rewrite — not byte-identical for XML.
When to pick which format¶
| Prefer | When |
|---|---|
| Turtle | Team authoring, Git-readable diffs, full Manchester, refactor apply |
| OBO | Biomedical term workflows (name, synonym, def, is_a) with OBO-native files |
| RDF/XML or OWL/XML | Protégé corpora that must stay XML on disk; accept layout churn on save — OWL/XML workflow |
| Keep Protégé | Byte-identical XML, Protégé-only plugins, or axiom types still limited here — known limitations |