Ontologies

Export an ontology

Export downloads the whole ontology as a standard file, so you can keep a copy, hand it to a colleague, or open it in another ontology tool.

In the app: Data Context › Ontologies › your ontology › Export

[screenshot]
The Export Ontology dialog with the Format picker.

Before you start

Anyone who can open the ontology can export it. Export is disabled while your organization is in read-only mode.

Export the ontology

  1. Open the ontology and click Export.
  2. In the Export Ontology dialog, choose a Format:
    • Turtle (.ttl): compact, readable text. A good default.
    • OWL / RDF/XML (.owl): XML, for tools that expect RDF/XML.
  3. Click OK.

The file downloads to your browser, named after the ontology, and a message confirms “Export ready — your download has started.”

Both formats carry the same content, so choose whichever the receiving tool prefers.

What the file contains

  • Every class, relationship, attribute, and instance, with their labels, descriptions, and annotations.
  • The ontology’s prefixes, so identifiers appear in short form such as :Customer rather than as full web addresses. Manage them under More › Prefixes.
  • Lakehouse bindings, if the ontology is bound to a Fabric lakehouse. They are written as extra annotations, so the file records which tables and columns each item maps to. When the ontology has several binding environments, the first one is exported.

Database bindings are not included in the export. An unbound ontology exports its structure only.

Export a past version

To export a snapshot instead of the live ontology, open More › Versions and use the export icon on a version card, or Export on the version’s page. The dialog notes that you are exporting the immutable snapshot. See Ontology versioning.

What you can do with the file

  • Keep it as a backup or check it into version control.
  • Share it with people outside your Kenseme organization.
  • Open it in a dedicated ontology editor.
  • Import it again, into another organization or back into this one, with Import from a file. Re-importing a file that was already imported returns the existing ontology rather than creating a copy.