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Ontology tool (tool_ontology)

See also: Tools user guide · Developer reference

Re-syncs the ontology records you just edited into the runtime table that drives the live data model, so your changes take effect.

This is a developer/administrator tool

tool_ontology rewrites the rows that describe every section and component in your installation. Both the action and its button are hard-gated to developers/superusers — an ordinary cataloguer will not see it, and calling it without developer rights is refused. If you are not maintaining the ontology itself, you do not need this tool.

What it's for

Dédalo's data model is ontology-driven: every section and component is described by ontology records. At runtime, though, Dédalo does not read those editorial records directly — it reads a fast, flattened projection of them held in the dd_ontology runtime table. When a developer edits an ontology record, the editorial record changes but that projection does not update automatically. Until it is re-synced, the change is invisible to the running application.

tool_ontology performs exactly that re-sync. It takes the ontology record (or records) you are looking at, re-parses them, and writes the result into dd_ontology. After a successful run it clears the relevant caches, so the change is visible immediately with no page reload.

A concrete example: an ontology engineer adds a new "countermark position" select to the Coin section in the ontology editor and saves it. The new component is still invisible because no runtime row describes it yet. The engineer opens tool_ontology on that record, presses Process (or Ctrl+S), and the new component immediately appears in the Coin edit form and in the thesaurus tree.

When to use it

  • Right after editing ontology records — one record, or a whole section — when you need the runtime model to reflect them.
  • To repair or regenerate a branch of the ontology after a larger refactor.

For dumping ontology definitions to JSON, restoring from a snapshot, or repairing drift between the runtime table and its source across whole hierarchies, use tool_ontology_parser instead.

Where to find it

The tool surfaces on ontology elements — inline on the matching component (used for single-record edit mode) and in the section inspector panel (used for batch/list mode). It appears only on ontology tipos and only for developers. It opens as a modal, and binds Ctrl+S to the Process action.

Using it, step by step

  1. Edit and save your ontology record(s) in the ontology editor as usual.
  2. Single record: open the tool inline on the component you changed and press Process (or Ctrl+S). Dédalo re-syncs just that record.
  3. A whole section / batch: open the tool from the section inspector with no single record selected. Dédalo re-syncs every record of that section — this is a full scan, not just the records your current list view is filtering to.
  4. Read the result message. On a batch, a record that fails to sync is skipped without losing the others (partial success), and the failing records are named in the messages.
  5. The change is live immediately — the caches are cleared for you.

List mode processes the whole section

When you run the tool in batch mode, it re-syncs every record of the section, ignoring any list filter you have applied. There is no way to narrow a batch to "just the records I am looking at" — plan accordingly on large sections.

  • tool_ontology_parser — inspect and rebuild the runtime ontology against its source across whole hierarchies, and export to JSON.
  • tool_hierarchy — builds new hierarchies and virtual sections rather than syncing existing ontology records.
  • Developer reference — the single action, its two modes, the permission gate, and internals.
  • The ontology documentation — the model this tool maintains.