Welcome Page. Lists what's new in the latest version, contains instructions on starting the server and logging in, and provides an Introductory Walk Through of Ontological Engineering.

Installation Instructions. OpenCyc is available for download from the SourceForge OpenCyc download page. Installation instructions are in the Readme file in the distribution, and they can also be viewed here. Installation instructions for version 0.7 are here.

Intro Tutorial. In order to get started learning about OpenCyc, complete the sections of the Cyc 101 Tutorial titled, KB Browser Interface Overview and Foundations of Knowledge Representation with Cyc. Also, under the next section (Predicates and Denotational Functions), complete the first lesson (The Basics). It is recommended that you work with the lessons online, but you can also download them as PDF or PowerPoint files.

OpenCyc KB Browser Reference. The OpenCyc KB Browser is the main interface tool for accessing the OpenCyc Knowledge Base. It provides a means for browsing, modifying or adding to your local copy of the OpenCyc KB.

Knowledge Entry

CycL Exercises. These exercises are meant to be used following certain lessons in the Cyc Tutorial. If you access the Tutorial from the Windows Internet Explorer browser, you'll see links to these exercises in the Related Lessons column of the Lesson Resources frame. Otherwise, you can access the exercises here.

Browsing and Editing the KB This exercise should follow the lesson called KB Browser Interface Overview.
Microtheories and Inferencing This exercise should follow the lesson called Microtheories.
Roles and Events This exercise should follow the lesson called Sub-events.
CycL Translations This exercise should follow the lesson called CycL Syntax.

CycL Reference. CycL is Cyc's language for expressing common sense knowledge. If you're just getting started, you can just quickly review this reference, for now.

OE Tutorials. If you are planning to do knowledge entry without the aid of a rapid knowledge formation (RKF) tool, you should complete all of the tutorial sections up to and including OE Example: Events and Roles. It is recommended that you work with the lessons online, but you can also download them as PDF or PowerPoint files.

OE Handbook. The Ontological Engineer's Handbook explores the principles of "OE" in greater detail than the Cyc 101 Online Tutorial. It assumes the reader has gone through the tutorial. Handbook sections include Writing Efficient CycL, KE and OE Tools, and CycL Queries.

OE Reference Documents. Some of these documents are slightly dated. They have received some editing to remove whole sections that were no longer true or relevant, but there still may be some mistakes. For example, constants may be mentioned that are not in the OpenCyc KB. If anything here contradicts something you read in the PowerPoint-based tutorials, trust those tutorials rather than this.

Programming

Cyc Programming Reference Docs. These documents describe the functioning of Cyc circa 2000. They have been edited to remove any gross inaccuracies relative to the current system, but they do not yet reflect enhancements made since 2000 to the subsystems in question. Also, the documents may mention constants that do not exist or that have different names in the OpenCyc KB.

OpenCyc Planner. The OpenCyc Planner is a reimplementation of the SHOP planner designed to directly access the Cyc Inference Engine. A planner is an inference engine optimized for reasoning about actions, events, and other activities in a dynamic world. To see a case study using the planner, click here. NOTE: There is a bug in the current release of the planner. Please load this KE Patch before attempting to use the planner. Also, the Planner currently works only from SubL and NOT from the Planner tool in the KB Browser.

OpenCyc SubL API Reference. The OpenCyc SubL Application Programmers Interface (API) is the protocol which allows applications to connect to and use the various CycL modules and functionality which together are used to maintain the Cyc Knowledge Base.

OpenCyc Java API Reference. Documentation of the OpenCyc Java Application Programming Interface. Auto-generated JavaDoc. The Java API is included in the OpenCyc package and is also available for download at the OpenCyc Project Site on SourceForge.

SubL Reference. SubL is a computer language built by members of Cycorp. SubL was written to support the CYC application, allowing it to run both under Lisp environments and as a C application generated by a SubL-to-C translator. The OpenCyc Knowledge Server comes with a built-in SubL interpreter, and SubL is also available through an API port, supporting server-side scripting. This document describes the primitive functions of SubL.

OpenCyc as a Database. Written by Dmitri Pissarenko, a member of the OpenCyc community. (Thank you, Dmitri.) This document explains how you can use OpenCyc and a Java Swing GUI to create a simple database application.

TPTP Challenge Problem Set. A suite of graduated challenge problems were developed for OpenCyc for the TPTP (Thousands of Problems for Theorem Provers) community.

Natural Language

Currently, OpenCyc contains very little of the linguistic knowledge necessary to support Cyc's overall natural language capabilities. Significantly greater NL functionality is available in ResearchCyc.

Administration

Supported Platforms. The beta versions of OpenCyc currently support Linux only. Red Hat and Mandrake have been confirmed as working. Others may or may not work at this time. We'll update the list when we get more feedback about what works. Version 1.0 of OpenCyc will also support Windows NT. No other platform support is planned at this time.

General Reference

Publications

Mapping Ontologies into Cyc (white paper)

Augmented Trading; Predicting stocks with OpenCyc

Mating AIML and Cyc Together with Program N

Oracle OpenCyc Interface

Other

Map of High-level Cyc Topics