1

Using a web or ftp client go to the URL: ftp://ftp1.nci.nih.gov/pub/cacore/EVS/

2

Select the version of NCI Thesaurus OWL file you wish to download. Save the file to a directory on your machine.

3

Extract the OWL file from the ZIP download and save in a directory on your machine. This directory will be referred to as NCI_THESAURUS_DIRECTORY in script examples.

4

Create Manifest and Preferences files. (optional)

Manifests update or fill empty terminology metadata and can make adjustments to names and alternate names, versions and many other things that the source terminology normally wants to say. This is very useful when the source terminology itself does not supply this information, but the user needs to record it in the terminology service representation. Some versions of the NCI Thesaurus may not load without a manifest. What follows is a sample manifest file used to update alternate names, language designations, versions and other metadata. Details of manifest elements are found in the Administration Guide to the manifest file.

Preference files control how data is loaded and, while they do not add anything to the source, they can change the representation of a terminology by making choices as to what is loaded as a property, entity, or association from the source terminology. The following preference file sets root nodes for the terminology and processes a set of complex properties not handled by the OWL processor, among other things. The full preferences definitions are described in the Administration Guide to the preferences file.

Since the Thesaurus may be released as either a "by code" or "by name" formatted source, preference files can serve the purpose of adjusting the entity code to its intended place in LexEVS. Here are some differences in an OWL formatted Thesaurus source.

• "By Code" formatted Thesaurus OWL class
  
  which has its entity code formatted as an rdf:ID. This loads as the unique identifier without using a preferences file.
• "By name" version
  
• With the code found as a "<code>" tagged attribute of the class
  
  In this case we can insure that the value "C1324" will be loaded into LexEVS as an entity code by supplying a preferences file with the following values. Loading this type of terminology without the preferences file may cause data truncation errors on the longer names and cause data loss on load.
  
  Finally, post processing is also available for this and other sources, as explained in the Administrative guide post processor section.

5

Using the LexEVS command line, load the NCI Thesaurus with no options:
Change to the LexEVS home directory.

cd {LEXEVS_HOME}/admin

For Windows installation use the following command:

LoadOWL.bat –in "file:///{NCI_THESAURUS_DIRECTORY}/Thesaurus_10.10d.owl

For Linux installation use the following command:

LoadOWL.sh –in "file:///{NCI_THESAURUS_DIRECTORY}/Thesaurus_10.10d.owl

This should work best with a "by code" type Thesaurus source terminology.

6

Using the LexEVS command line, load the NCI Thesaurus with options:
Change to the LexEVS home directory.

cd {LEXEVS_HOME}/admin

For Windows installation use the following command:

LoadOWL.bat –in "file:///{NCI_THESAURUS_DIRECTORY}/Thesaurus_10.10d.owl" -mf "file:///{NCI_THESAURUS_DIRECTORY}/Thesaurus_MF.xml"
-lp "file:///{NCI_THESAURUS_DIRECTORY}/Thesaurus_prefs.xml"

For Linux installation use the following command:

LoadOWL.sh –in "file:///{NCI_THESAURUS_DIRECTORY}/Thesaurus_10.10d.owl" -mf "file:///{NCI_THESAURUS_DIRECTORY}/Thesaurus_MF.xml"
-lp "file:///{NCI_THESAURUS_DIRECTORY}/Thesaurus_prefs.xml"