Using Forms to View and Edit Asset Information
Creating and Using Asset Lists
You can add any asset or group of assets to an asset list through the Search Panel.
The asset list is a way of bulk editing or sharing groups of assets. The “batch actions menu” is in the top right.
Pencil icon lets you name an asset list. The above asset list has been named “customer”. To create another asset list, drag the asset list panel from the panel selection to your window. Now when you choose to add to an asset list, you will choose which of your two asset lists.
Asset lists are private until shared. Cloud icon opens a menu that lets you open an existing asset list and share an asset list you create with colleagues who have permissions to this collection. They will be able to go to “Open an existing Asset List” and find all of the shared asset lists along with their own.
The settings menu lets you configure how information about assets in a list is displayed e.g., whether a person who added it to a list is displayed as a column.
Editing Assets using Form Panel
You can modify asset information directly by editing it in an asset collection or you can use Workflows and edit information in the working copy of the collection that is managed by the workflow. Irrespective of the choice, editing options are the same.
Asset information is modified primarily using the form panel. Clicking on the Edit button on top of the form opens all fields for editing. Alternatively, to clicking on the Edit button, users can do inline editing. Mouse over the area between the field name (e.g., definition) and the field itself. You will see a pencil icon. Click on it to start editing one property at the time.
TopBraid EDG supports modular management of information. You can create resources in one asset collection, then include this collection into another one and add more information about these resources.
See also
See :ref:’combining_asset_collections_target’ on how to combine asset collections through includes.
The hue of the icon at the top of the form will indicate if that resource is from the selected collection or is included from another collection. If included from another collection, the icon will be a lighter color. Further, you will see at the top of the form information about a collection where this resource is defined in.
You will be able to click through to that “defining” collection and modify the resource there.
If you do not go to the defining asset collection and decide to edit an included (or referenced) resource in your current collection:
You will only be able to add information and will not be able to remove or modify any of the information from the included collection.
The changes you make are added to the collection you are currently in, not the collection this resource has come from.
Similarly if you choose to delete an included resource, only the changes you made in that collection will be deleted, not the original resource. If you want to make changes to the statements that are included, use Explore -> Open in Defining Asset Collection. This will open the asset in the collection where it was originally created.
Click on the + (plus) sign to the left of the editable field to get a slot for a new value. Plus sign will appear only if the property could have more than one value. Click on the – (minus) sign to the right of the editable field to remove a value.
For attribute values, you can just type the value. A convenient picker may appear depending on the datatype e.g., a date. EDG will protect you from making mistakes. For example, if a value is supposed to be an integer, you will not be able to enter letters.
Note
A language tag for a string can be selected from the dropdown to the right of the field – if a value is defined as a language tagged string.
The dropdown icon to the left of the delete icon lets you switch to a different edit widget – If multiple types are defined for an attribute e.g., a string or a language string or HTML. For string values, you will be able to switch between a “text field” (a single line entry field) and a “text area” (a larger text box). Options shown are determined by the schema (ontology) that defines the asset type.
For relationship values, you can:
Start typing the name of the existing resource and pick it from the auto-complete.
Enter the URI of the related asset. The dropdown menu available by clicking on the “v” sign to the right of the field will let you switch between using autocomplete (default) and entering a URI.
Use search to find the resource you want to connect to by clicking on the button directly to the right of the field – as shown below.
Create a new resource by clicking on the button directly to the right of the field – as shown below.
Drag and drop assets from other panels directly into a form.
After at least one change is made, Save Changes button becomes clickable. If any of the edits presents an issue, the page will display them. You will have a choice to correct issues prior to saving, cancel edits or save them as-is.
Preview button will display added and deleted statements as well as any issues.
Sometimes, to the left of a field open for editing you will see a + icon surrounded by a square shape. Clicking on it will open a subform that lets you make statements about property’s value. For example, you may want to say that a value of a country code or a status has an effective start and an effective end date.
When information shown on the form is a relationship, you can:
Right click to see and use menu options for the related resource.
Click on the dropdown to switch the display to show URI of the related asset instead of its label (in view not in edit mode). You can also click on Show Details to see the embedded form for the related asset.
Further, if you mouse over the related asset, you will see an info box with its description (aka Wikipedia) if a description is available.
Sometimes, a form may display information in tables and/or display generated diagrams. What to display as a table is defined in the associated ontology models and can be configured. For example, in the form below for a database table from Northwind you see two tables: one containing data sample (not editable) and one containing records of data quality runs (editable).
Values That Can’t Be Edited
If a value of a property is displayed, but not editable, it means that one of the following is true:
Values for this property are automatically calculated (inferred) by EDG. Rules for inferring values are defined in the underlying ontologies. Some values may also be inferred by default, but still editable. In this case, any user edit overrides system inferences.
Or
Value has been entered in an asset collection that is included in the currently selected collection. In this case, you will not be able to remove or change the value. To edit it, you must navigate to the defining asset collection. If, however, the property can have multiple values, you will able to create additional values for such properties.
Or
Property has been set as “read only” in the underlying ontology. This may happen if your organization wants to control addition and edits of values for certain properties in the UI e.g., to make such edits possible only through import or APIs or to make them possible only in certain asset collections or to protect users in certain roles from incidentally modifying these values.
Alternate Form Views
An asset may have more than one type. It may also be of a single type, but have multiple views defined.
See also
For information on defining alternative views, see Working with Ontologies view shapes.
The view you will see by default will depend on your role and selections made in the relevant ontology.
If an asset shown on a form has multiple types or different role-based views, it can be viewed and edited using any of these perspectives. In such cases, you will see a dropdown box at the top right of the form next to the settings menu.
You will also be able to select a Merged view that, for assets that have multiple types, will combine properties of all types. To do this, select Settings>Merge properties from all suitable view shapes.
Additional Options for Viewing and Modifying Data
Additional options for modifying data in other editors panels are as follows:
Source Code Panel: This is a low-level technical operation and should be only used by users who are well versed in RDF, the underlying data model behind EDG. Your EDG Administrator can disable access to this panel for some of the users.
SPARQL Query Panel Update access must be enabled on the server to modify through SPARQL queries.
You can also modify data through GraphQL in EDG accessible from each collection’s Export tab.
The Forms for classes, SKOS concepts and concept schemes have a section called “Display” where you will find the “hidden” property. Setting it to “true” will hide these resources from the panels that display tree views – Class Hierarchy panel (in case of classes) and Taxonomy Concepts panel (in case of concepts and concept schemes). When a parent is hidden in the tree, all its children also disappear from the tree – unless they have another parent. The Class and Taxonomy Concepts panels have a “ghost” setting to show hidden items. To do this, select Settings> Also show assets marked as hidden.
Batch Edit
Batch Edit is available from the Asset List Panel, Instances Panel and Search Panel. Where you see the following menu item once you select multiple assets:
The batch edit wizard tool will then be launched.
Note
You can only modify resources of the same type.
If you have selected resources with multiple types, you will be asked to choose one.
The wizard will then let you select properties you want to change and walk you through modifying data using features similar to those of the Editing Assets using Form Panel.
Source Code Panel
The Source Code panel allows users to view and edit asset data in the Turtle serialization format. Editing source code is a low level operation for expert users and care should be taken.
Warning
When editing Source Code it is possible to cause damage to the EDG workspace making it unavailable. An administrator can configure the EDG server to block all edits to source code, which is recommended for organizations without expert users knowledgable about editing Turtle serialization.
The Source Code panel can also be hidden from users in certain roles.
Depending on the situation, one or two two windows appear:
an upper window shows the content of the current graph (asset collection)
if there are included graphs, a second lower window shows their content which is not editable
The upper window lets you edit the current graph data. You can make changes and click on the Save Changes button. Save Changes will not be available if editing introduces any syntax errors.
Prefix declarations can be expanded and collapsed. Do not make changes to prefixes using Source Code panel. Only ever change them as described in Controlling Namespaces and Prefixes .
The Settings menu option will let you hide statements from an included graph by hiding the relevant window.
Matrix Panel
The Matrix Panel assists with batch editing of matrix-like instances. Related values can chosen as rows and columns in the Matrix Panel. For example in a Geography taxonomy, rows could be Countries and columns could be Continents, and the property would be broader concept. The Matrix panel would then allow editing of the data all at once instead of country-by-country. It also provides a high level picture of the current state of the data.
Assets Hierarchy Panel
These panels show tree views of resources based on any relationships. Select the root resource type to start the tree. Use the gold circle icon to the right of the setting icon to make the selection. This can also be pre-set in the Manage tab.
Hierarchy of Selected Asset Panel
This panel shows a tree view starting with the currently selected resource, letting you to expand its relationship values as children in the hierarchy. These children can then be similarly expanded and so on.
Problems and Suggestions Panel
This panel checks the content of the asset collection against all of applicable quality rules (i.e., applicable shapes and validity constraints they define). It also runs enrichment rules to suggest mappings.
The Problems and Suggestions panel will raise validation results if values of properties do not comply with the (SHACL) constraints defined in the ontology your data is based on.
Depending on the asset collection, it may also perform additional algorithms to produce suggestions. Among others, the Problems and Suggestions panel can be used to execute so-called Test Cases. Test cases are a mechanism to repeatedly verify that certain conditions are (still) met. See `DASH Test Cases https://datashapes.org/testcases.html`_ for technical background.
The context menu in the upper right corner of the Problems and Suggestions panel offers the following settings:
Generate Suggestions instructs the SHACL validation engine to also produce suggestions for fixes.
Hide redundant suggestions will skip any Info-level suggestions with less than 100 confidence if one of the others has a confidence of 100.
Max number of constraint violations defines after how many reported violations the engine will stop.
Minimum suggestion confidence will skip suggestions under a certain threshold.
Record validation profiling information will collect and present the execution time of the validation engine for each shape and constraint component.
Run Crosswalk matching suggestions is available for Crosswalk asset collections only.
Run DASH test cases defines whether test cases (see above) should be executed.
Run Data-element-to-term mapping suggestions based on labels is available for Data Asset collections where at least one Glossary Term is available
Run Wikidata mapping suggestions is available when some class(es) have been mapped to WikiData (using the property
dash:detailsEndpoint
).Skip system shapes during validation will skip the validation of the shape definitions themselves. This may reduce the execution time.
Note
RDF, as a flexible graph data model, lets you make statements that were not anticipated e.g., to say something about Person’s eye color even if no property “eye color” is defined for a Person.
Creating such values is not supported by the form-based editing in TopBraid EDG – the forms are entirely driven by what is defined in ontology models. Yet, it is possible to add values for undefined properties e.g., if you have appropriate permissions, you could use the Source Code panel to add any triple directly in Turtle or you could import RDF containing any kind of triples. The fact that these triples may be using properties not explicitly defined in the ontology is not a violation of the model. It will not be flagged by the Problems and Suggestions unless you explicitly say that no values except for the defined properties are allowed.
Change History Panel
The Change History Panel will show all captured changes – additions and deletions.
Each change can be expanded to show details. Added statements are shown in green. Removed statements are shown in pink.
You can filter displayed changes by selecting a user who made a change, the time period when changes were made, and/or the property (predicate) which values were changed.
To see only changes made to the currently selected asset, click on the “on selected” button.
Changes can also be reverted from the change history panel. Click to select changes you want to revert and then click on the Undo icon – the first icon in the panel.
Note
This will create an audit trail entry for the revert operation.
Workflows will have a button “from workflow only” to narrow down to only changes made specifically in the current workflow.
Inferences Panel
Inferences panel lets you run rules. It will display all triples generated by the rules using a table with 3 columns: subject, predicate and object.
In addition to the button that runs rules, the panel provides:
A button to assert all inferred triples. It will be displayed only once you execute rules and they generate some statements that will be shown in the panel. Clicking on this button will write the inferred statements into the asset collection. Until you take this action, generated statements are not stored permanently.
A button that will display all available rules and let you activate and deactivate them for the run.
Note
Rules defined using sh:values are evaluated dynamically and will NOT be shown or executed by the panel.
The screenshot below shows the dialog that will appear when you click on this button.
Settings button. It lets you switch between the display of labels and URIs and between the tabular display of the inferred statements and display in the Turtle format (source code). It also lets you control the number of iterations.
If you expect your rules to produce a large number of triple statements, we recommend that you run them by using the option available in the Transform tab. The role of Inferences panel is primarily to help you with testing rules as you develop them.
Instances Panel
This panel will show a table of instances of a selected class i.e., resources with the type corresponding to the selected class. The free text search field at the top of the panel lets you filter the list. The panel also has New button for creation of new assets of selected type. Settings menu has further options governing what and how is shown. The first column of the table is a check box. If you select multiple assets, you will be able to use the “batch actions menu” at the top right to perform the same bulk operations as those available in the Assets List panel.
References Panel
References panel displays all assets that refer to the currently selected asset (in the form or one of the other panels). For each referring asset, you will see its label and the referring relationship.
If you click on one of the referring assets, it gets selected on the form, in the hierarchical panels, etc. Then, in turn, what is shown in the References panel will change. If you want to avoid this from happening, select the “pin” option under the Settings (gear) menu. This will prevent the contents of the Reference panel from changing as you click around.
Class Hierarchy Panel
In EDG, every asset is a member of at least one class. This panel displays hierarchy of classes starting with a selected root. Hierarchical relationship between classes is rdfs:subClassOf. Class information is only editable if you are in an Ontology. In other collection types you will only be able to view class information.
See also
For more information about this panel see Class Hierarchy Panel .
Node Shapes
While EDG will declare all new Classes also as Node Shapes. It also also supports creation of Node Shapes that are not Classes which may be useful when creating an alternative view of class members or when creating a shape that will be used in other shapes, for example, as part of logical expressions.
The Node Shapes Panel displays ONLY node shapes that are not Classes and supports creation of such shapes.
See also
For more information about this panel see Node Shapes Panel .
Property Groups
The Property Groups Panel displays properties associated with a selected class or a node shape. Properties are displayed organized into groups, reflecting how they would be shown on a form.
See also
For more information about this panel see Property Groups Panel .
RDF/OWL Property List
The RDF/OWL Properties List Panel is a table showing instances of rdf:Property class and its subclasses. New button lets you create new properties.
Local Assets Panel
This panel will display only assets that are defined in the current asset collection. Assets from included collections will not be shown. There is a Search field to filter results and check boxes for selection. You can then use the “More” button in the upper left of the panel to execute operations on selected assets.
Available Crosswalks Panel
This panel will list any crosswalks that map the current asset collection to another collection. Y ou will be able to access crosswalk mappings from this panel. You will also be able to create new crosswalks.
See also
For more information see Working with Crosswalks .
Taxonomy Concepts
Taxonomies collections include a Taxonomy Concepts Panel which displays taxonomy concepts organized into concept schemes. It also lets you create new concepts and schemes.
See also
For more information, see description of this panel in Working with Taxonomies guide.
Other Panels
Other more specific panels are documented in the relevant sections of this guide:
SPARQL-related panels - Using SPARQL to Query and Modify Data
Available Crosswalks - create_new_crosswalk_target
Script-related panels - The Scripting User Interface