Table 1
Comparison of OLSVis and other two-dimensional ontology visualisers
OLSVis OLS FlexViz OntoViz IsaViz GOSurfer GOMiner OntoTrack OBO-Edit QuickGO AmiGO
Full Dynamic layout method ✓ ✓(semi) 1 ✓(semi) 1 ✓(semi) 1 ✓(semi) 1
Layout user-interaction Interactive; + continuous optimisation2 one-by-one dragging one-by-one dragging highlighting a selected branch one-by-one dragging one-by-one dragging
Hierarchy layout ancestors: layered; children: circular ancestors: layered; OR: parents + children several3 ancestors + children: layered graph-view or radar-view tree view ancestors + children: layered ancestors + children: layered ancestors + children: layered ancestors subfolders
Term searching ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Multiple term search ✓
Auto-suggest ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Filters ✓ ✓ ✓
Undo ✓ ✓4 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓4 ✓4
Context dependent display5 ✓
Click on term expands it ✓ page reload ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Path to root ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Simple tree view ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Handling 500 terms ✓ ✓
Term source OLS (79 ontologies) OBO (79 ontologies) NCBO (293 ontologies) OWL ontologies RDF graph visualiser GO (1) GO (1) OWL ontologies OBO ontologies GO (1) GO (1)
Web tool (Technology) ✓ (Javascript) ✓ (images) ✓ (Flash) –(Protégé) –(Java) –(.exe) –(Java) –(Java) –(Java) ✓ (HTML) ✓ (HTML)

1: Only shifting between static configurations. 2: Also during the several editing functions (which are displayed on OLSVis’ toolbar). 3: Each with their own shortcomings, see ‘Background’. 4: Browser’s back button. 5: The visualiser can optionally clean up nodes that are not in the latest expanded node’s “environment”.

Comparison with: OLS [13], FlexViz [11], OntoViz [22], IsaViz [23], GOSurfer [24], GOMiner [25], OntoTrack [26], OBO-Edit [27], QuickGO [9], AmiGO [10]).

Vercruysse et al. BMC Bioinformatics 2012 13:116   doi:10.1186/1471-2105-13-116

Open Data