Creating a Project

To create a new Protégé-2000 project:

  1. Select New from the Project menu or click the New Project button
  2. Select the format you want for your Protégé-2000 files from the Select Format dialog and click OK.
    There are three basic formats that are always displayed:
    Standard Text Files (the default) creates project files in Protégé-2000 format. These can also be viewed with any text editor or word processor.
    JDBC Database creates the project as a table in a JDBC database. To do this you must have a database installed and configured on your system. See Saving a Database Project for more information.
    Resource Description Framework (RDF) saves the project in RDF format. See Saving an RDF Project as well as RDF Support in Protégé-2000 for more information.
    If your version of Protégé-2000 has been customized to support additional formats, then you will also see them in this list.
  3. An initialized knowledge base will be created which contains the system classes rooted in :THING. No instances will be created. You can then structure your project by creating your classes and slots. (See Creating a New Class and Creating a Slot for more information.) 
  4. To save the project to disk, select Save from the Project menu. 
  5. Enter a name for your project in the Project line of the dialog box. This is the name of your project (.pprj) file. The same name will automatically be entered as the name for your ontology and instance files, unless you change it. 

No matter which format you choose, the information specific to the Protégé-2000 interface is saved in a pprj (Protégé project) file. You can create, open, and save your projects directly via the pprj file. You do not need to name or access the other file types unless you wish to build a project.

Internal Project Structure

Internally, there are additional files which contain further information about the ontology and instances of the project. When you open a pprj file, Protégé-2000 automatically loads these files.

By default, the additional files are saved in text format:

You can also choose to save your project as a database or in RDF format. In the case of a database, the class/slot and instance information are saved in a single table in a JDBC database. In the case of RDF format, the class/slot and instance information are saved as separate RDF files. In either case, Protégé-2000 still uses the pprj file to access the project. 


Next: Opening a Project

Project Table of Contents