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Applications and Tools

How do I access the data?

Once you have signed the license, you will get the data distribution as an archive, typically via download. The data are available in XML and as a database dump. We offer several tools and application programming interfaces with which this data can be accessed.



Application Programming Interface

There is a Java Application Programming Interfaces (API) available that provides easy access to all information in GermaNet. There are several versions of the API, each reflecting the structure of one or more releases of the GermaNet data.


Always use the most recent version of the API that works for your release of the data!


How to choose the API version


Version numbers are split into parts, where the first part indicates the first release of the data for which the API works, and the second and optional third parts indicate major and minor fixes respectively. The API will continue to work for subsequent data releases, until the structure of the data has changed.


For example:
Version 9.0.3 has had 3 minor fixes and works for data releases 9.0 - 12.0
Version 13.1.0 has had 1 major fix and works for data releases starting from 13.0



  • Java API 13.1.0: This version of the API can be used with GermaNet versions 13.0 and 14.0.

    Javadocs can be found here: Javadocs

    The source code and the tutorial are available on github.

    If you only need the jar file, go to the Maven Repository and click on the "jar" link in the Download column.

    If you are using Maven, add the following dependency to your pom file:

    <dependency>
      <groupId>de.tuebingen.uni.sfs.germanet</groupId>
      <artifactId>germanet-api</artifactId>
      <version>13.1.0</version>
    </dependency>


  • Java API 9.0.3: This version of the API can be used for GermaNet versions 9.0, 10.0, 11.0, and 12.0.

    Javadocs can be found here: Javadocs

    The source code and the tutorial are available on github.

    If you only need the jar file, go to the Maven Repository and click on the "jar" link in the Download column.

    If you are using Maven, add the following dependency to your pom file:

    <dependency>
      <groupId>de.tuebingen.uni.sfs.germanet</groupId>
      <artifactId>germanet-api</artifactId>
      <version>9.0.3</version>
    </dependency>



  • Java API 8.0: You can download version 8.0 of the Java API here (including source code). This API can be used for GermaNet version 8.0. For documentation, please see the enclosed tutorial or the online Javadoc-documentation.

  • Java API 7.0: You can download version 7.0.2 of the Java API here (including source code). This API can be used for GermaNet version 7.0. For documentation, please see the enclosed tutorial or the online Javadoc-documentation.

  • Java API 6.0: You can download version 6.0.1 of the Java API here. This API can be used for GermaNet version 6.0. For documentation, please see the enclosed tutorial or the online Javadoc-documentation.

  • Java API 2.0: You can download version 2.0.2 of the Java API here. This API can be used for GermaNet version 5.2 and 5.3. For documentation, please see the enclosed tutorial or the online Javadoc-documentation.

  • Java API 1.2: You can download version 1.2 of the Java API here. This API can be used for GermaNet until version 5.1. Please note that due to the changes on the GermaNet data content, it was necessary to adapt the API correspondingly. Thus all programs that are using a previous version of the APIs (under 2.0) have to be revised to the new API.


Semantic Relatedness API

To calculate semantic relatedness between any two words/readings in GermaNet, you can use the Semantic Relatedness API implemented in Java:




GermaNet-Explorer

GermaNet-Explorer is a software to visualize GermaNet. It allows to show all lexical units (word senses) and synsets of a word. Furthermore, it can represent all semantic relations in a structured manner. A visual graph-based navigation through GermaNet is possible.



This software was originally developed in the context of the project "Hypertextualisierung auf textgrammatischer Grundlage" (HyTex) at the University of Dortmund. You can find further documentation on the project page. GermaNet-Explorer was programmed by Marc Finthammer, University of Dortmund, and adapted to the new Java API 2.0 (see above) by Verena Henrich, University of Tübingen.



GernEdiT - The GermaNet Editing Tool

GernEdiT is a graphical editor that is used by the lexicographers to enter lexicographic data into the GermaNet database. It provides a graphical user interface to the database, which mainly allows maintaining the GermaNet data in a user-friendly way. There are several ways to search data, and browse through the GermaNet graph. These functionalities support lexicographers, among other things, in finding the appropriate place in the hierarchy for the insertion of new synsets and lexical units. A screenshot of GernEdiT is shown in Figure 1. GernEdiT is freely available for download:



Some flash movies show GernEdiT in action:


  • GernEdiT flash movie 1: Basic search functionality, conceptual relations list, hypernymy graph, frames and examples, view editing history with its filtering functionality, list with all lexical units

  • GernEdiT flash movie 2: Add new conceptual relation, delete conceptual relation, follow conceptual relation, list with all synsets with its search and filter functionalities

  • GernEdiT flash movie 3: Insert new synset with lexical unit, insert new lexical unit, delete lexical unit, delete synset

For more information on GernEdiT, please refer to the following paper:


Verena Henrich and Erhard Hinrichs: The GermaNet Editing Tool. In Proceedings of the Seventh Conference on International Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2010), Valletta, Malta, pp. 2228-2235.
[Download paper: http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2010/pdf/264_Paper.pdf]



Screenshot of GernEdiT
Figure 1: Screenshot of GernEdiT - The GermaNet Editing Tool