TopBraid Composer (TBC) is the world’s most powerful ontology modeling tool, SPARQL query editor, data integration console and an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for building semantic applications. Fully compliant with W3C standards, TBC offers complete support for developing, managing and testing configurations of ontologies and linked data. TBC provides a comprehensive IDE and administration tool for all TopBraid server products.

Implemented as an Eclipse plug-in, TBC serves as a development environment for SPIN, SPARQLMotion, SPARQL Web Pages and all the applications delivered using TopBraid Live™. TBC is used to build ontology models, configure data source integration, and create semantic web services and user interfaces.

TopBraid Composer is available for free download. To install, unzip the downloaded file and either run the installer (.exe file) or unzip the contents to a directory (.zip file). The installer process will create menu shortcuts. The zip file will create an executable named “TopBraid Composer” that is used to start Composer. TopBraid Composer does not add entries to the Windows registry.

When first starting Composer, you will be asked to choose a Workspace location. This is a folder structure that contains all projects and files available to Composer. Choose any folder that Composer has access permissions for. After Composer has started the workspace location can be changed using File > Switch Workspace. The Example and System ontologies, which are required for many TopBraid Composer features, will automatically be inserted into a new workspace in a project named “TopBraid”.

Composer will ask for license information. Licenses are sent via e-mail after purchase. The license can be entered in Help > TopBraid Composer Registration.

TopBraid Composer-Maestro Edition (TBC-ME) has a 30-day evaluation period. There are a number of resources for getting started with TopBraid Composer. The Getting Started Guide and other sources are found in the right-hand column of the Composer home page. The Videos page includes Getting Started videos.

There are extensive Help files for Composer. In Composer, click on Help > Help Contents.

The free evaluation period is 30 days, beginning after you install the product. We recommend postponing your installation until you are prepared to evaluate the product. Once you complete your evaluation period, chances are you will not be able to run an evaluation copy on the same computer for at least a year even if you download a different release. We reset the evaluation flags every 18-24 months.

Sometimes users have special reasons for needing to extend their evaluation period. For example, a purchase may be already going through their procurement organization, but it is taking time and, in the meantime, their evaluation ended preventing them to continue working. If you need to extend evaluation, write to sales@topquadrant.com. They should be able to extend it for another 30 days. However, if it has been more than 60 days since you installed the tool, we will not be able to extend your trial period.

This depends on your needs.

TopBraid Composer is a single-user tool that installs on your Windows, Mac, or Linux computer. See https://www.topquadrant.com/products/topbraid-composer/ for capabilities. 

TopBraid EDG is a web-based multi-user product. Like TopBraid Composer it lets you edit models and their associated instance data. Unlike TopBraid Composer, TopBraid EDG is targeted to business users needing to collaborate on the development of ontologies.
TopBraid EDG it has the specialized features for editing controlled vocabularies, a simpler user interface, pre-built imports, exports and reports, role-based access control and collaboration tools that let a workgroup coordinate proposed changes and roll them out in a structured fashion. Every change made in EDG is tracked in an audit trail that captures its nature, who made it and when it was made. EDG also includes web APIs for communication with other applications. 

TopBraid Composer is a single-user tool that installs on your Windows, Mac, or Linux computer to make it easier to work with RDFS, SHACL and OWL models and instance data. See https://www.topquadrant.com/products/topbraid-composer/

TopBraid EDG is a web-based multi-user product. Like TopBraid Composer it lets you edit models and their associated instance data. Unlike TopBraid Composer, EDG-Vocabulary Management package has the specialized features for editing controlled vocabularies, a simpler user interface, pre-built imports, exports and reports, role-based access control, workflows collaboration tools that let a workgroup coordinate proposed changes and roll them out in a structured fashion. Other packages of EDG focus on and have specialized capabilities for working with reference data and enterprise metadata. For example, EDG-Metadata Management package can catalog and profile enterprise data sources and provide data lineage views. Every change made in EDG is tracked in an audit trail that captures its nature, who made it and when it was made. EDG also includes web and GraphQL APIs for communication with other applications. 

Please see our supported platforms page.

Please see our Supported Platforms page.

You will receive an email with your attached key file – save this file on your system.For a new TBC product:
When you start your TBC application you will be asked to register your product and the application will guide you through the quick registration of your product.For an existing TBC product:
From the main menu – choose ‘Help’Choose ‘TopBraid Composer Registration’ – then click on ‘Next’Choose ‘Browse File System’Choose the license file from location where it is saved.

Click on ‘Finish’

Note: In the case where you have a license key number rather than a license key file – you can use that number in place of the file for versions prior to 4.6.0

When a file is opened by TBC, it is read into memory. Thus, the size of the file you can open is limited by the amount RAM available on your machine. EDG uses databases, not files, so this limitation does not apply to EDG. If you use TBC to work with large files, one recommendation is to create a local Jena TDB database from the file. This can be accomplished by right clicking on a file and selecting Import -> TopBraid Composer -> Import RDF files into a new TDB. Import process is streaming and will not take as much RAM as opening the file.

Secure storage is used to store passwords to data back-end connections. It works by maintaining a mapping between base URIs of connector files and passwords required to connect to the back-end data store. When a connector is created, the password for the connector is encrypted and stored securely in secure storage. Whenever the connector is opened, via either a file open or owl:imports operation, the password is retrieved through secure storage before being sent to the data back-end server.

Secure storage passwords must be entered once per installation of TopBraid Composer. The secure storage password serves as the master password that locks and unlocks the secure storage for applications to read and write from. When a connector file is created or a connector file is opened that does not have a secure storage password set up, the following dialog box will appear:

Click ‘Yes’ and enter a password. Password and secure storage can be maintained through Preferences > General > Security > secure storage.

Data connector passwords can be passed to TopBraid Live when deploying from Composer to Live via ‘Export… > Deploy Project to TBL server’ and choosing the ‘Send necessary connection credentials’ check box. Passwords will be decrypted and sent to the TBL server where it will be encrypted by the TBL secure storage password. Secure HTTP (https) is suggested for fully secure password storage.

Increasing the amount of memory available to Composer involves setting the -Xmx value for the maximum Java heap size. The setting is packaged in the .ini file with the command line parameters for starting Composer.

For Windows, use the “TopBraid Composer.ini.orig” file. This will ensure the settings stay the same even if other Eclipse applications try to change it.
Open the file with a text editor. The -Xmx value can be set to any whole number, such as “-Xmx800m”. However, if the value exceeds the amount of memory that can be allocated to the JVM by your system, Composer will not start. If this occurs, edit the .ini/.orig file for a smaller size until Composer starts.

For Macintosh users, the .ini file is packaged with the application. Find the application file, it will be named “TopBraid Composer”, and right-click to choose ‘Choose Package Contents’. The ‘TopBraid Composer.ini’ is found in the Contents/Eclipse folder.

TopBraid Composer is available for free download. To install, unzip the downloaded file and either run the installer (.exe file) or unzip the contents to a directory (.zip file). The installer process will create menu shortcuts. The zip file will create an executable named “TopBraid Composer” that is used to start Composer. TopBraid Composer does not add entries to the Windows registry.

When first starting Composer, you will be asked to choose a Workspace location. This is a folder structure that contains all projects and files available to Composer. Choose any folder that Composer has access permissions for. After Composer has started the workspace location can be changed using File > Switch Workspace. The Example and System ontologies, which are required for many TopBraid Composer features, will automatically be inserted into a new workspace in a project named “TopBraid”.
Composer will ask for license information. Licenses are sent via e-mail after purchase. The license can be entered in Help > TopBraid Composer Registration.
TopBraid Composer-Maestro Edition (TBC-ME) has a 30-day evaluation period. There are a number of resources for getting started with TopBraid Composer. The Getting Started Guide and other sources are found in the right-hand column of the Composer home page. The Videos page includes Getting Started videos.
There are extensive Help files for Composer. In Composer, click on Help > Help Contents. See Help Sources for TopBraid Composer.

Help files are found by clicking on Help > Help contents.

All text serializations (RDF/XML/Turtle/NT/N3/JSON-LD files) should first be imported into Composer’s workspace before opening. This can be accomplished, as detailed below, by 1) drag-and-drop from the file system to Composer’s Navigator view, 2) by copying a file from the file system to a folder, or 3) by Import… > General > File System.
Once the file appears in the Navigator view, double-click on the file name, or right-click and choose Open. Source code for text serialization files (RDF/XML/N3/Turtle/NT/JSON-LD) can be viewed in a text editor by choosing Open With… > Text Editor.
There are three ways to import a RDF text serialization file into Composer:
1. Locate your file in your directory and drag the file name into the Navigator view in Composer, as shown below:

2. Perform a copy on the file in your file system. Right-click on a folder and choose paste, as shown here:

3. Copy the file through the Eclipse Import… > General > File System wizard:

• • Right-click on a folder and choose Import…
  • Open ‘General’ in the wizard (see circled ‘1′ below) and choose File system.
  • Choose the files you wish to import into the workspace (see circled ‘2′ below).

Composer’s interface is designed with emphasis on displaying classes, instances of classes, and properties. If RDF data is opened or imported that do not have type triples, i.e. ‘?x rdf:type owl:Class’, ‘?x rdf:type rdf:Property’, etc., the resources will not be immediately visible in the interface. Another typical scenario is that instances are defined as members of rdfs:Class, in which case one must look under that class in the Classes view.

There are a few ways to view all triples in the current model. One is to open the triples view (Window > Show View > Triples View). Click on namespaces to show all triples. Another is to query for triples in the SPARQL view, where the following will display all triples:
SELECT ?s ?p ?o WHERE { ?s ?p ?o }

A property will not appear in the Form view if the property is not defined. I.e. if the triple ‘kennedys:JohnKennedy kennedys:birthDate “1917-05-29″^^xsd:string’ is defined, but the property ‘kennedys:birthDate’ does not have a property type (does not have a rdf:type triple for a property type), the resource will not appear in the form for kennedys:JohnKennedy. If a type triple for the property exists, such as ‘kennedys:birthDate rdf:type owl:DatatypeProperty’, the resource will appear in the form.

Additionally, the gold arrows on the toolbar menu can also be used for navigation. They support the following navigations: Last edit location, Back and Forward.

To send an error message, 1) double-click on the error in the Error View and click the “Copy Event Details to Clipboard” icon (see figure), and 2) create an email message to composersupport@topquadrant.com.

If you hold the CTRL key and mouse over any item on the Form view, it becomes hyperlinked as shown below. This includes all entries in any of the widgets (including the Rules and SPARQL query widgets), as well as the built-in resources from rdfs and owl namespaces that are part of the form, such as rdfs:subClassOf and owl:disjointWith.
In the example below, not only can you navigate to the RealEstate class (as shown), but you could also, if desired, navigate to rdfs:subClassOf.

All icons in Composer’s user interface are associated with type triples. For example, the icon for a class will appear as a light brown circle if the resource has an owl:Class type triple – ‘?rsc rdf:type owl:Class’. A key for all icons is found in Help > Reference > Icons Legend. Any resource lacking a type triple will have a globe icon.

If a resource does not have a type triple, the data is still valid (the globe icon does not indicate an error or warning), and the default globe icon is used to indicate that the URI is valid, but a resource’s type is not defined.

TopBraid platform uses the base URI as the URL of a file, meaning that the base URI uniquely identifies a file. This is used to resolve imports and other graph-based operations on RDF files. If the same base URI is associated with more than one file in a workspace, designating one file as the “primary” file is used to ensure consistent references to the base URI, including import statements.

The primary file is set by the last file imported or created with the same base URI. If a user opens a non-primary file, a dialog appears asking the user if the primary file for the base URI should be changed to the file being opened. If ‘Yes’ is chosen, the primary file is changed, which will affect all files importing that base URI.
Files that are not the primary file, but have a base URI conflict, are designated with a yellow warning sign in the file icon in the Navigator. A full listing of all file to base URI mappings in the workspace is shown in the File Registry (Window > Show View > File Registry).

As a best practice, base URI conflicts should be avoided or managed carefully. Since only files in open projects are registered, closing a project can be used as a means to manage base URI conflicts. Closing a project with a primary file will change the base URI mapping to a file in an open project, if any exist.

Yes. You can simply double click to open XML file in TBC. This feature uses Semantic XML (SXML) model. For a more specialized transformation from XML to RDF/OWL, use Import > TopBraid Composer > Import XML Schemas wizard.
XML from RDF/OWL export wizard uses instances annotated with Semantic XML triples to transform them to an XML document. In order to comply with an XML Schema, these instances could be defined against classes and properties that were imported from the XML Schema using the Import XSD wizard.