> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.biobox.io/guide/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.biobox.io/guide/data-packages/external-ontologies.md).

# External Ontologies

## General Data Transformations

Ontologies are structured data writing in RDF/XML syntax or in OWL. They are great resources to express very complex and precise domain-specific knowledge. In practice, they aren't that useful by itself because:

* Not human readable, and you'll need special software like Protege
* T-box structured
* Good for schemas, bad for analysis

For more information about the different ontologies in the biomedical space, we recommend checking out the documentation on [obo foundry](https://obofoundry.org/).

For practical reasons we transform ontologies from their T-Box structures into A-Box schemas. In other words, we map a "Class" in an ontology as an Object in the data graph itself.

<figure><img src="/files/s6XgdOUvxlslyXjj8o60" alt=""><figcaption><p>T-Box pattern for diseases</p></figcaption></figure>

Inside our labelled property graph, we can use labels to denote the Conceptual hierarchies of your core ontology.

<figure><img src="/files/ptiOSK22sxnVSR1xc8kR" alt=""><figcaption><p>A-Box pattern with labels</p></figcaption></figure>
