OLS4 is available at https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ols4/. Please report any issues to the tracker in this repository.

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Version 4 of the EMBL-EBI Ontology Lookup Service (OLS), featuring:

• Much faster dataload (loads the OBO foundry in hours instead of days)
• Modular dataload pipeline with decoupled, individually testable stages
• Automated CI testing of the dataload with minimal testcase ontologies
• A lossless data representation: everything in the ontology is preserved in the databases
• Coverage of the whole OWL2 spec, and also loads vocabularies defined purely in RDFS
• Uses updated versions of Solr and Neo4j (no embedded databases, no MongoDB)
• React frontend using Redux and Tailwind
• Backwards compatibility with the OLS3 API

This repository contains three projects:

• The dataloader (dataload directory)
• The API server (backend directory)
• The React frontend (frontend directory)

Deploying OLS4

Deployment instructions will go here. OLS4 is still under heavy development, so currently we only have detailed instructions for developers below.

However, if you just want to try it out, this should get you going:

export OLS4_CONFIG=./dataload/configs/efo.json
docker compose up

You should now be able to access the OLS4 frontend at http://localhost:8081.

If you want to test it with your own ontology, copy the OWL or RDFS ontology file to the testcases folder (which is mounted in Docker). Then make a new config file for your ontology in dataload/configs (you can use efo.json as a template). For the ontology_purl property in the config, use e.g. file:///opt/dataload/testcases/myontology.owl if your ontology is in testcases/myontology.owl. Then follow the above steps for efo with the config filename you created.

Developing OLS4

OLS is different to most webapps in that its API provides both full text search and recursive graph queries, neither of which are possible and/or performant using traditional RDBMS. It therefore uses two specialized database servers: Solr, a Lucene server similar to ElasticSearch; and Neo4j, a graph database.

• The dataload directory contains the code which turns ontologies from RDF (specified using OWL and/or RDFS) into JSON and CSV datasets which can be loaded into Solr and Neo4j, respectively; and some minimal bash scripts which help with loading them.
• The backend directory contains a Spring Boot application which hosts the OLS API over the above Solr and Neo4j instances
• The frontend directory contains the React frontend built upon the backend above.

Development: Running OLS4 using Docker

You can run OLS4, or any combination of its consistuent parts (dataload, backend, frontend) in Docker. When developing, it is often useful to run, for example, just Solr and Neo4j in Docker, while running the API server locally; or to run Solr, Neo4j, and the backend API server in Docker while running the frontend locally.

First install the latest version of Docker Desktop if you are on Mac or Windows. This now includes the docker compose command. If you are on Linux, make sure you have the docker compose plugin installed (apt install docker.io docker-compose-plugin on Ubuntu).

You will need a config file, which configures the ontologies to load into OLS4. You can provide this to docker compose using the OLS4_CONFIG environment variable. For example:

export OLS4_CONFIG=./dataload/configs/efo.json

Then, start up the components you would like to run. For example, Solr and Neo4j only (to develop the backend API server and/or frontend):

docker compose up --force-recreate --build --always-recreate-deps --attach-dependencies ols4-solr ols4-neo4j

This will build and run the dataload, and start up Solr and Neo4j with your new dataset on ports 8983 and 7474, respectively. To start Solr and Neo4j AND the backend API server (to develop the frontend):

docker compose up --force-recreate --build --always-recreate-deps --attach-dependencies ols4-solr ols4-neo4j ols4-backend

To start everything, including the frontend:

docker compose up --force-recreate --build --always-recreate-deps --attach-dependencies ols4-solr ols4-neo4j ols4-backend ols4-frontend

Development: Running OLS4 locally

Alternatively, you can run OLS4 or any of its constituent parts locally, which is more useful for development. Software requirements are as follows:

1. Java 11. Later versions of Java are probably fine, though the Neo4j we use only works with Java 11.
2. Maven 3.x.x
3. Neo4J 4.4.x
4. Solr 9.0.0
5. Your favourite Git client
6. Yarn 1.22.X

Acquire source and build

Clone repo:

git clone git@github.com:EBISPOT/ols4.git

Build backend:

mvn clean package

Build frontend:

npm install

Test testcases from dataload to UI

The scripts below assume you have the following environment variables set:

NEO4J_HOME

SOLR_HOME

OLS4_HOME - this should point to the root folder where you have the OLS4 code.

Change the directory to $OLS4_HOME.

cd $OLS4_HOME

To load a testcase and start Neo4J and Solr, run:

./dev-testing/teststack.sh <rel_json_config_url> <rel_output_dir>

where <rel_json_config_url> can be a JSON config file or a directory with JSON file, and <rel_outdir> the output directory, both relative from $OLS4_HOME, i.e.:

./dev-testing/teststack.sh ./testcases/owl2-primer/minimal.json ./output

or if you want to load all testcases, you can use

./dev-testing/teststack.sh ./testcases ./output

Once Neo4J and Solr is up, to start the backend (REST API) you can run:

./dev-testing/start-backend.sh

Once the backend is up, you can start the frontend with:

./dev-testing/start-frontend.sh

Once you are done testing, to stop everything:

./stopall.sh

Running the dataload locally

TODO

Running the API server backend locally

The API server Spring Boot application located in backend. Set the following environment variables to point it at your local (Dockerized) Solr and Neo4j servers:

OLS_SOLR_HOST=http://localhost:8983
OLS_NEO4J_HOST=bolt://localhost:7687

Running the frontend locally

The frontend is a React application in frontend. See frontend docs for details on how to run the frontend.

Development: Updating testcases_expected_output

If you change something that results in the test output changing (e.g. adding new tests, changing what the output looks like), the CI on this repo will fail.

To fix this, you need to replace the testcases_expected_output and testcases_expected_output_api folders with the new expected output. You should do this in the same commit as your code/test changes because then we can track exactly what changed in the output.

First make sure all the JARs are up to date:

mvn clean package

Then run the test scripts:

• ./test_dataload.sh (~1 minute) will test the dataload locally, updating testcases_expected_output. All you need is Java and Maven.
• ./test_api.sh (~15 mins) will test the entire OLS4 stack (dataload → solr/neo4j → api server) using Docker compose to bring up and tear down all the services for each testcase, updating testcases_expected_output_api. You need to have Docker and Docker compose installed.

To run both:

./test_dataload.sh
./test_api.sh

Now remove the existing expected output:

rm -rf testcases_expected_output
rm -rf testcases_expected_output_api

Copy your new output to the respective directories:

cp -r testcases_output testcases_expected_output
cp -r testcases_output_api testcases_expected_output_api

You can now add it to your commit:

git add -A testcases_expected_output
git add -A testcases_expected_output_api