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Stardog Explorer

This chapter discusses Stardog Explorer - an intuitive web browser tool for anyone to browse the connections in their data fabric.

Page Contents
  1. Overview
  2. Searching in Explorer
    1. Filter searches
  3. Examine details
  4. Visualization Capabilities
  5. Settings
  6. Getting Support
  7. Learning More

Overview

Stardog Explorer is the search and visualization tool for anyone to explore complex data fabrics easily, without code or queries. For the best experience in Stardog Explorer, use Stardog version 7.6.3 or above.

To authenticate using Kerberos, both the Stardog server and your browser must be correctly configured. Check out the detailed documentation on how.

Searching in Explorer

Searching in Explorer is easy. Simply enter any text based search term you are interested in. If you want to enter a more complex search, the search bar supports the use of wildcards using the * character to denote matching to any characters.

Explorer will use full-text search when it is enabled for database. When full-text search is not enabled for a database, Explorer searches based on starts with and ends with patterns. Explorer will also search based on starts with and ends with patterns against all virtual sources within scope. However, if both virtual and local data are within scope and the database has full-text search enabled, Explorer will use full-text search against local Stardog data.

Additionally, Explorer searches are limited to the following properties:

  • http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#comment
  • http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#label
  • http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#definition
  • http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#prefLabel

Filter searches

To narrow search contexts down to specific classes, use the class filter to the right of the search bar.

Examine details

Explorer has detailed views of each class entity in your database. From this detailed view, see up to 10 instances of each connected property. Additionally, these properties are linked so you can continue exploring.

Visualization Capabilities

The graph visualization in Explorer is configured to help you explore your data and allow you to customize your view of your data fabric. The key capabilities of the visualization view within Explorer are outlined below.

  • Select specific nodes and edges to highlight them in the graph. Pressing shift enables multi-selection. You can also drag-select to select multiple objects in the graph at once.
  • The legend on the right-hand side of the screen summarizes the class types shown in the visualization.
    • To filter to a specific class, click on the class type in the legend.
    • The legend can be collapsed by sliding it to the right.
  • Stardog Explorer groups any two or more nodes of the same class type with the same ingoing and outgoing relationships. Grouping facilitates Explorer’s ability to showcase more of your connected data.
    • To remove a node from group, simply select the node and drag it out of the group
    • To break apart a group, double click the group node
  • To expand a node or set of nodes by their relationships, right-click on a selected set of nodes. The Expand by menu includes all incoming and outgoing relationships tied to the set of nodes selected
    • Double-click on a node to expand all of it’s relationships

Settings

There are three settings within Stardog Explorer which allow you customize your experience.

Explorer Settings

  • The Graph setting will filter your results down to a specific graph. When no option is selected, Explorer will query all local Stardog graphs - that is, the default graph and all named graphs in the database.
    • To include all virtual sources, ensure your database has virtual transparency enabled and select the special named graph for all to include all virtual and local data in Stardog or virtual to include all and only virtual data. To learn more about virtual transparency, check out the detailed documentation.

  • The Model setting is limited to your Stardog Server’s reasoning schemas and allows you to specify a specific reasoning schema. By default, Explorer uses the default reasoning schema.

  • The Reasoning toggle enables reasoning throughout Explorer. To learn more about reasoning and Stardog’s Inference Engine, check out the detailed documentation.

Getting Support

For questions, comments, or feature requests, please post in the Explorer section of the Stardog Community.

Learning More

The Stardog blog includes posts about new Explorer functionality. All of those posts are available under the Explorer Tag.