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Ontology Explorer

The Ontology Explorer renders your Glossary as an interactive graph, letting you visualize how terms relate to one another—parent/child hierarchies, related terms, and metrics—beyond what the flat Glossary list view can show.

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Accessing the Ontology Explorer

Reach the Ontology Explorer from the main navigation, or scoped to a single term from that term’s page.

• In the left navigation menu, select Govern > Ontology Explorer.
• The same graph is also available scoped to a single term: open any Glossary Term and go to its Relations Graph tab.

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Reading the Graph

The graph page combines a summary bar with the term canvas itself.

• Summary bar: At the top of the page, Collate shows counts for Terms, Metrics, Relations, and Isolated terms—terms with no relationships to any other term.
• Term clusters: Collate groups terms into boxes by their parent glossary, each labeled and color-coded by glossary name.
• Relationship edges: Lines connect related terms across and within clusters, labeled with the relationship type—for example PARENT OF or RELATED TO.
• Term details: Select any term node to open a side panel with its details and relationships.

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Model and Data Views

Use the Model / Data toggle below the graph to switch what the graph renders:

• Model: Shows the term-to-term ontology—how glossary terms relate to each other. The View Mode, Isolated toggle, and term pagination (Load More) described below only apply in this view.
• Data: Shows terms alongside the data assets tagged with them. Select a term node to expand it and load the assets (tables, dashboards, and so on) associated with that term.

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View Modes

In Model view, use the View Mode dropdown to change how the graph is arranged:

• Overview: The default flat view showing all term clusters and their relationships.
• Hierarchy: Arranges terms by parent/child structure.
• Cross Glossary: Shows only relationships that cross glossary boundaries. The Isolated toggle is disabled in this mode, since Cross Glossary excludes isolated terms by definition.

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Filtering the Graph

Narrow the graph down using the filter controls in the toolbar.

• Glossary: Scope the graph to one or more specific glossaries.
• Relationship Type: Filter edges down to a specific relationship type.
• Isolated: Toggle whether the graph shows terms with no relationships.
• Term count: The toolbar shows how many terms are currently loaded (for example, 159/159 Terms)—use Load More to page in additional terms.
• Clear all: Once a Glossary or Relationship Type filter is active, a Clear all button appears to reset both filters at once.

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Searching, Exporting, and Graph Settings

Beyond filtering, the toolbar also covers search, export, layout, and canvas navigation.

• Search in Graph: Find a specific term without manually scanning the canvas.
• Export Graph: Download the current graph view as a PNG or SVG. If your instance has RDF (Resource Description Framework) indexing enabled and the graph is scoped to a single glossary, Turtle and RDF/XML export are also available.
• Graph Settings: Select the Settings icon to:
  • Change the graph Layout—choose between Hierarchical and Circular.
    • Hierarchical: Arranges terms into ranked, tree-like layers based on their relationships—useful for following parent/child structure top-down.
    • Circular: Arranges terms around a circular layout instead of in ranked layers—useful for getting an overview of a cluster without a directional hierarchy.
  • Toggle Edge Labels on or off, to show or hide relationship-type labels on the connecting lines.
  
• Canvas controls: Use the canvas control icons to Fit to Screen, Zoom In, Zoom Out, or Refresh the graph.

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