Welcome to the ultimate hands-on guide for learning Ontology Engineering using the famous pizza.owl tutorial. This repository is designed to take you from a complete beginner to an advanced user of Protégé, the world’s most popular ontology editor.
In the era of AI and Large Language Models (LLMs), Ontologies provide the structured "world knowledge" that machines need to reason. By mastering this tutorial, you will learn how to:
- Define complex hierarchies and relationships.
- Use Reasoners to automatically classify data.
- Write SWRL rules to add intelligent logic.
- Build the backbone of Knowledge Graphs.
This repository is a companion to my comprehensive video course. I recommend following the videos while using the snapshot models in this repo to check your work.
Protégé 5.x Pizza Tutorial Video Series
I have tracked my progress step-by-step. You can jump into any stage of the tutorial by using the files in:
/snapshot_models: RDF/OWL files at various stages of the tutorial./ontology_ref: Reference materials and SHACL shapes.Protege 5 New OWL Pizza Tutorial V3.2.pdf: The core manual based on Michael DeBellis' guide.
- Download Protégé.
- Install a reasoner like HermiT or Pellet (included in most Protégé versions).
| Phase | Topics Covered | Key Videos |
|---|---|---|
| Foundations | Classes, Subclasses, and Disjointness | 01 - 09 |
| Properties | Object Properties, Domains, and Ranges | 10 - 13 |
| Logic | Existential & Universal Restrictions | 14 - 24 |
| Advanced | SWRL Rules, SPARQL Queries, and SHACL | 37 - 42 |
| Cloud | WebProtégé & WebVOWL | 43 - 45 |
- Taxonomies vs. Ontologies: Moving beyond simple hierarchies to complex logic.
- Open World Assumption: Understanding how OWL reasoning differs from traditional databases.
- Description Logic (DL): Learning to query your knowledge base effectively.
- SWRL & SQWRL: Adding "If-Then" rules to your ontology.
- Original Guide: Based on Michael DeBellis' excellent Protégé OWL tutorial.
- Mind Map: Use the pizza.owl tutorial.mm (Open with FreePlane) for a visual overview.
- Visualization: View the model via WebVOWL.
If you find this tutorial helpful, please:
- Star this repository to help others find it.
- Subscribe to the YouTube Channel for updates.
- Feel free to open an Issue if you have questions about the modeling steps.
Happy Modeling! 🍕
Last updated at 2026-01-26
