Protege4Migration

Choosing between versions of Protege

This page contains a high level outline of the major differences in features between Protege 3.x and Protege 4.0.

Overview

There are a number of differences between the Protege 3 series (Protege 3.3.1, Protege 3.4 beta) and the alpha version of Protege 4.0. This page is designed to highlight some of the major factors that may influence which of the two systems would be most appropriate for your project at present. It will also serve as a useful reference point for identifying major features that need priority migration from 3.x to 4.0. This list is by no means exhaustive and is intended as an overview only.

Side by Side Comparison

Protege 3.x	Protege 4.0
Protege 3 Screenshot	Protege 4 Screenshot
Frames Support	Frames Support
Frames editing supported via the Protege-Frames editor	None (Protege-Frames editor has not been migrated yet)
OWL Support	OWL Support
OWL 1.0 language support	OWL 1.1 language support
OWL and RDF(S) support	Pure OWL framework
OWL and RDF(S) files are parsed using the Protege-OWL API, which was developed at Stanford. This API layered OWL support over the existing Protege-Frames API.	OWL files are parsed using the OWL API, which was developed at the The University Of Manchester. This API closely follows the OWL specification and is optimized to be faster and use less memory.
SPARQL support	No SPARQL support yet
SWRL support	No SWRL support yet
Support for meta-modeling (allowing OWL Full)	No OWL Full
Reasoner support through HTTP DIG interface allows connection to any DIG compliant reasoner	Direct connection to FaCT++ and Pellet for optimum speed of classification
Configuration settings stored in Protege Project files (.pprj)	No project files, configuration settings persist across installations of Protege
OWL imports handled through a repository mechanism	Simplified imports resolution from a common folder (repositories also supported)
Plugins	Plugins
Plugin framework developed at Stanford for tab widgets, slot widgets, back-ends, projects, importing, and exporting	Plugin framework was switched to the more industry standard OSGi, which allows for any type of plugin extension
Large set of plugins available, developed both in-house and externally by the Protege community	Migration of plugins to Protege 4 is in the beginning stages, but an increasing number are becoming available
User Interface	User Interface
Tab and slot widgets make much of user interface configurable	Plugins define all user interface elements including tabs, views, and menus making everything configurable
Access is provided to the meta model and can be used to configure the user interface	Menu and drag and drop user interface elements