rdf-ontology-downloader

A simple Makefile-based tool to download common open RDF ontologies from their canonical sources into a local out/ directory.

Requirements

• make
• curl

Usage

List available targets:

make        # same as `make help`
make help

Download every ontology:

make all

Download a single ontology (e.g. Brick):

make brick

Remove all downloaded files:

make clean

Files are written to out/ and are gitignored.

Available ontologies

Target	Output file	Description
brick	out/brick.ttl	Brick Schema 1.4.4 — building metadata ontology
csvw	out/csvw.ttl	CSV on the Web (CSVW) vocabulary
dc_elements	out/dc_elements.ttl	Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (legacy 15 terms)
dc_terms	out/dc_terms.ttl	DCMI Metadata Terms (full Dublin Core vocabulary)
dcat	out/dcat.ttl	Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT) 3
foaf	out/foaf.rdf	Friend of a Friend (FOAF) vocabulary
odrl	out/odrl.rdf	Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) 2.2
org	out/org.ttl	Organization Ontology (W3C ORG)
owl	out/owl.ttl	OWL 2 Web Ontology Language schema
prof	out/prof.ttl	Profiles Vocabulary (PROF)
prov	out/prov.ttl	PROV-O: Provenance Ontology
qb	out/qb.ttl	RDF Data Cube Vocabulary
rdf	out/rdf.ttl	RDF 1.2 core vocabulary
rdfs	out/rdfs.ttl	RDF Schema 1.1 vocabulary
sdo	out/sdo.ttl	Schema.org vocabulary (latest)
shacl	out/shacl.ttl	Shapes Constraint Language (SHACL)
skos	out/skos.rdf	Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS)
ssn	out/ssn.ttl	Semantic Sensor Network (SSN) ontology
vann	out/vann.rdf	VANN: vocabulary for annotating vocabulary descriptions
void	out/void.ttl	Vocabulary of Interlinked Datasets (VoID) — LOV mirror
xsd	out/xsd.xsd	XML Schema datatypes (XSD, not RDF)

Notes on formats

Each ontology is saved in whatever serialization its canonical publisher provides:

• Most targets produce Turtle (.ttl).
• foaf, odrl, skos, and vann are saved as RDF/XML (.rdf) because their canonical publishers do not ship a Turtle version.
• void is fetched from the LOV mirror because the canonical host (vocab.deri.ie) is offline.
• xsd is the XML Schema file (.xsd), not an RDF serialization — XSD datatypes are not published as an RDF ontology.

Adding a new ontology

1. Add a phony alias under ##@ RDF Ontologies in the Makefile, with a ## description:

   myvocab: out/myvocab.ttl  ## My vocabulary description

2. Add the file rule with a | out order-only prerequisite:

   out/myvocab.ttl: | out
   	curl -fsSL -o $@ https://example.org/myvocab.ttl

3. Add the alias to .PHONY and to the all target.