Skip to content

Supported ontology formats (v0.17)

This page is the canonical reference for what OntoCode/OntoCore can do with each file format today.

If you are deciding whether to adopt OntoCode, cross-check this page with What ships today and Known limitations.

Quick summary

  • Write-back (edit in OntoCode / patch): Turtle (.ttl) and OBO (.obo)
  • Read-only (index/query/browse): OWL/RDF serializations including OWL/XML (.owl, .owx) and RDF/XML

Capability matrix

Format File extensions Index & browse Query (SQL/SPARQL) Entity Inspector edit (write-back) Patch JSON write-back
Turtle .ttl Yes Yes Yes Yes
OBO .obo Yes Yes (via indexed catalog) Yes (v0.13+) Yes (v0.12+)
OWL/XML .owl, .owx Yes Yes No (read-only) No
RDF/XML .rdf, .xml Yes Yes No (read-only) No
JSON-LD .jsonld Yes Yes No (read-only) No
N-Triples .nt Yes Yes No (read-only) No
N-Quads .nq Yes Yes No (read-only) No
TriG .trig Yes Yes No (read-only) No

Why some formats are read-only

OntoCode focuses write-back on formats where it can safely round-trip edits with predictable diffs today:

  • Turtle is the primary write-back target.
  • OBO write-back is supported for common OBO term workflows.

For OWL/RDF XML and JSON-LD, OntoCode can index, browse, and query, but does not yet guarantee safe in-place write-back.

See also: