String Search Tab Documentation

Functionality

The String Search tab allows the user to search through all values of type String in a knowledge base. It can be used to search for classes, slots and instances, as well as to search through slot values in the knowledgebase. Metaclasses and slots can also be searched just like other classes and slots (metaclasses are displayed with the usual green colored ‘C’ in the results table). See Test Cases for some scenarios in which this tab can be used.

This tab can also be used to search for slot values of type Instance by searching for the browser text of an instance. If the slot where the match is found is the browser slot for that instance (i.e. the browser text matches the query) then, all references to that frame are also fetched and included in the results.

For example, in the newspaper ontology which comes with Protégé, if the search string is "Tim", the result will have the instance Tim as well as the instance San Jose Mercury News because Tim is the name (browser slot) of the instance Tim which appears in the employees slot of the instance San Jose Mercury News (i.e. San Jose Mercury News refers to the instance Tim). See Figure 1 and Figure 3.

Figure 1

Displaying a particular result uses the associated form widget to show the frame. Matched slots for that frame are highlighted. (See Figure 2).

If an instance returned by the search appears on a graph (either as a Node or as an Arc) then instead of displaying that frame, the graph containing the match is shown with the matches highlighted (See Figure 3).

Search queries can be strings or can contain an asterisk (‘*’) at the beginning and end for "beginning with" and "ending with" type queries. The asterisk at the end is assumed, for example "manager" is treated as "manager*".

Description of the Results Display:

The results are displayed in a table that has Frame, Direct Type, Matched Slot, Matched Value, and Graph columns

Frame: The Frame column displays the browser text of the frame
Direct Type: Displays the direct type of the frame
Matched Slot: Displays the slot that had a value matching the search string

Note: If there is more than one slot within a frame matching the search strung, one row is presented in the results table for each matching slot. This is done to provide easy visual checking for any particular slot of interest, which the user can locate by sorting the slots column.

Matched Value: The value that matched the search
Graph: This column contains the name of the graph instance (if there is one) that references (contains the slot with reference to) the searched instance.

Ordering the results:

Values in any of the columns can be sorted by Clicking on the column header.

Displaying the Frame:

Any frame from the results can be viewed using its form widget by either double clicking on it or through the View (‘V’) button near the top of the results table. Frames are displayed with matching slots highlighted (by a black border around them).

Highlighting in Graphs:

If a frame from the result set appears on a graph, the graph name will be displayed in the ‘Graph’ column. Displaying the frame will show all the instances on the Graph that matched the search as highlighted. Frames on the graph can be viewed in the same way as on a normal graph in Protégé and will be displayed with the matched slots highlighted.