Domain experts can join in
The person who knows the business does not have to learn a serialisation format to tell you the model is wrong. They point at a box and say that is not what we mean by that.
Visual graph modelling tool
A graph model everyone in the room can point at
Graph.Build Studio is a visual, no-code graph modelling tool for RDF ontologies and property graph schemas. You draw the model on a canvas, and the same model then drives the ETL that fills it, which is the part most modelling tools leave to somebody else.
Why model visually
The model is the thing everyone argues about
Which makes it the worst possible thing to keep in a format only two people can read.
the argument
Written as OWL, a model can only be reviewed by whoever writes OWL
That is rarely the person who knows what a customer actually is in your business, and they are the person whose disagreement matters. On a canvas the classes, the relationships and the cardinalities are all visible at once, so the review happens in the first meeting rather than after the pipeline is built. Studio models RDF and property graphs on the same canvas, so choosing between them stops being a decision you have to get right before you start.
The consequence: the expensive mistakes get caught while they are still a shape on a screen.
customer.ontology · canvas
4 classes · 11 properties
gbo:Customer 11 properties
hasLegalName xsd:string
holdsAccount gbo:Account
registeredIn gbo:Jurisdiction
incorporatedOn xsd:date
exports as OWL, or as a property graph schema, from the same model
What it changes
Six things that get easier the moment the model is on screen
These are the reasons people give afterwards, in roughly the order they give them.
Mistakes are visible, not latent
A class with nothing pointing at it, a relationship going the wrong way, a property attached to the wrong thing. All obvious on a canvas and all invisible in a thousand lines of Turtle.
caught at design time
Changes are cheap
Renaming a class or moving a property is a small edit rather than a search and replace across a mapping codebase, because the mapping reads the model instead of restating it.
cost of a rename an afternoon
The model is reusable, not decorative
Most modelling tools produce a diagram and then a separate team writes the pipeline. Here the model is what the Transformers and Writers execute, so the picture cannot drift from the graph.
drives the ETL itself
Standard vocabularies come with it
Schema.org, SKOS, PROV and Dublin Core are built in, and any external ontology can be imported and laid out on the canvas so you can see what you would be adopting before you adopt it.
reuse before reinvention
Onboarding takes a screen, not a file
Showing someone the shape of the domain is a five minute job. Handing them an OWL file and wishing them luck is a fortnight, and they will still ask you what connects to what.
new joiner same afternoon
Is this RDF only, or does it do property graphs?
Both, from one model. You describe the domain once and Studio produces an OWL ontology for the semantic side and a property graph schema for the other, rather than asking you to draw the same thing twice and keep the two in step by hand.
Can I import an ontology we already have?
Yes. Bring an existing OWL or RDFS file and Studio lays it out on the canvas, which is usually the first time anyone on the team has seen its actual shape. Public vocabularies work the same way, so you can check that one fits before you commit to reusing it.
Does no-code mean I lose control?
No. The output is standard OWL, and the mappings are RML and R2RML, which are open W3C specifications. Everything Studio produces is a file you can read, diff and check into version control. The canvas is a better way to write those files, not a substitute for having them.
How does the model reach an actual database?
Transformers apply the mapping to your sources and emit RDF or CSV, and a Writer loads that into your graph database over SPARQL, Cypher or Gremlin. That is the whole point of modelling here rather than in a drawing tool: the model is executable.
What if two people edit the model at once?
Studio is git-backed, so a change is a commit with an author and a message, and the history is there to read. Teams working on the same model coordinate the way they already do with code.
Next
The tool this page is about is called Studio
It is worth forty-five minutes on your own domain rather than another page of description.
- Model RDF and property graphs on one canvas
- The model drives the ETL, not just the diagram
- Any graph database at the other end