COLLABORATIVE DEVELOPMENT OF LARGE - SCALE BIOMEDICAL ONTOLOGIES - Collaborative Computational Technologies for Biomedical Research - page 192

Once users have confi gured the user interface and saved the layout, the
next time that they log into WebProtégé, the customized layout will be restored.
WebProt é g é stores user interface confi gurations per user and per project. This
means that two users may have two completely different views of the same
ontology. If no view is confi gured for a user and project, WebProtégé will
display the default layout as shown in Figure 12.7.
The only way to support the fl exible and customizable user interface was
to make the user interface layout declarative. The layout confi guration is
stored as an XML fi le with a predefi ned schema (the user guide for the layout
confi guration can be found here: http://protegewiki.stanford.edu/wiki/Web
ProtegeLayoutConfi g). By changing the XML confi guration fi le, WebProt é g é
can be easily customized in Web applications tailored for a particular domain.
We have used this feature to create a custom Web application used for the
development of ICD-11 (The customized ICD-11 application is available at
http://icatdemo.stanford.edu) [7, 8, 16] and for other collaboratively developed
ontologies.

12.3.2 Browsing and Editing

Multiple users may browse and edit ontologies stored in WebProtégé. The
default confi guration of WebProtégé shows the Classes tab (Fig. 12.7), which
presents in different portlets information related to a selected class in the class
tree such as the annotation properties, the restrictions, and the notes and dis-
cussions attached to the class. Users may create new classes by using the Create
toolbar button on top of the class tree. In a similar fashion, other portlets
provide support for editing, either by means of toolbar buttons in the portlet
or by simply double clicking on a value. Users may edit properties in the
Properties tab and individuals in the Individuals tab.
In many cases, the editors of the ontology are domain specialists who are
more familiar with Web forms than they are with editing the formal descrip-
tions in the ontology. To accommodate these users and to make WebProtégé
easier to use, we implemented a form-based input mechanism in which we can
bind properties in the ontology to editing widgets, such as text fi elds, radio
buttons, check boxes, tables, and so on. The form-based input mechanisms are
implemented using the PropertyFormPortlet (the form-based input form
documentation can be found here: http://protegewiki.stanford.edu/wiki/
PropertyFormPortlet). The ICD-11 Web application uses this portlet to support
domain experts in entering information related to particular diseases. The
example can be browsed in the link that appears in http://icatdemo.stanford.edu.

12.3.3 Collaboration Support

WebProtégé is a client for Collaborative Protégé and therefore has access to
all collaboration features presented in Section 12.2, including notes and discus-