I am leaving tomorrow morning for the California until the 11 May. Until then I will be reachable via email, but with some latency, so please pardon me if I don’t answer the same day you send the email.
Do not hesitate to send me an email if you have questions, comments or suggestions about my works, I will be a pleasure for me to answer to them, it will just take a little bit longer than usually.
Semantic Web (RDF) data won’t come from initiatives such as LiveJournal.com and Tribe.net with the exportation of their user profiles into RDF using the FOAF ontology; at least not at first. These initiatives are marginal considering the current state of the Web: billion of web pages where most of them are archived into relational database and generated, on-the-fly, in HTML.
Semantic Web (RDF) data will come from the conversation of relational databases of widely used web software such as WordPress, Mediawiki and phpBB, into RDF using some ontologies. Some methods can be used:
This blog post will show you how we can do the same with your WordPress blog and your Mediawiki wiki using Virtuoso RDF Views.
This is quite powerful: by using these views any WordPress or Mediawiki instance could be queried using SPARQL. Other views could easily be created for phpBB (currently on the way), and virtually any relational database accessible from the Web.
Since developing these views is quick and simple, it makes them certainly one of the best tools to convert current relational data sources into RDF.
Mitko Iliev developed these two RDF Views that are using the WordPress and Mediawiki database schemes and convert them into RDF using a RDF View. I added some comments in the code but as you can notice, they are quite simple and intuitive to understand (if you have some knowledge in SPARQL.
You have 3 possibilities to install these RDF Views.
The idea here is to give access to the relational data to Virtuoso by using one of these three methods. After that, it is just a matter of sending SPARQL queries against the RDF View.
I will use that MediaWiki instance to show you a couple of examples. This is a modified version of MediaWiki 1.7 that uses Virtuoso instead of MySQL as dbms. Then we installed the RDF View I talked about above. From that point, we can query this Mediawiki wiki instance using SPARQL. Remember that it is always running in a relational database, but thanks to the RDF View, we can view its data in RDF too!
We can endlessly continue like that. What I would suggest you to do is to click on the results you get in these web pages, and to click on the “explore” link. That way, you will jump from node to node and find interesting stuff.
I believe that it is the best way to push people to adopt the semantic web, and all its concepts, as The way to describes things on the Web. Once we will get all that useful data from existing sources (musicbrainz, US census data, geonames, name it) and that people will start to release services using all this data in a useful way, then people will start to generate their content for the semantic web. This is why we should continue in that direction. Many people are already working to convert existing sources of data (relational database, web APIs, etc.) into RDF: the linked-open-data community, Zitgist, OpenLink, and probably many others. I would guess (in fact I am sure) that in one year we would have several billion of triples ready to be searched and browsed by Web users.
A new ontology development group has been formed: the XBRL Ontology Specification Group. This new ontology will describes financial and economic data in RDF.
As introduced by Kingsley:
The parallel evolution of the XBRL and the Semantic Web is one of the more puzzling of technology misnomers. The Semantic Web expresses a vision about a Web of Data connected by formal meaning (Context). Congruently, XBRL espouses a vision whereby by formally defined Financial Data is accessible via the *Web (and other networks). The Semantic Web uses Schemas and Ontologies for defining Data Domains while XBRL uses Taxonomies that are XML Schema Based. The Semantic Web uses XML as one of its Data Interchange formats (i.e RDF/XML) while XBRL is based on XML at all levels (model and instance data).
It is the goal of the XBRL Ontology project that we mesh the XBRL and Semantic Web realms by producing OWL based Ontologies of XBRL Schemas that facilitate the generation of RDF Instance Data for XBRL Data Sources (e.g. XBRL Documents). This effort is not intended to supercede the use of XML Schemas in XBRL in any way. It simply provides a mechanism for exposing XBRL based Financial Data to the Semantic Web.
What are the anticipated deliverables:
- OWL Ontologies for XBRL Taxonomies such as the XBRL GL (and others)
- RDF instance data for said Ontologies
- SPARQL (Semantic Web Query Language) based Access Points for XBRL Instance Data
Benefits:
- Transparent integration of disparate financial systems
- Mapping of application data (e.g. SQL) to relevant XBRL Ontologies which are then exposed to WAN (Web) or LAN (Intranet) via SPARQL access points
- Easy mechanism for plugging into burgeoning Semantic Data Web
Some people already started to talk about the development of the XBRL Ontology and are interested (or are already in) to join this new ontology development group. These people are:
Some systems are already up and running to help the development team to communicate their ideas, suggestions and questions vis-à-vis the XBRL Ontology.
This new ontology development project aim to describes financial and economic data for exchange and analysis. Some people already started to work on the project as you can notice in the list above. The development of this ontology will be based on the XBRL initiative and existing XBRL taxonomies. But it won’t restrict its expressiveness to XBRL related works only.
I am pleased to announce that we finally put online the Zitgist.com website. Some more information about the future service is available there. People can start to link to zitgist.com when referring to this coming semantic web search engine. Eventually people will be able to fill a subscription form to get a private account to test the alpha version of the service. Finally a developer wiki will be available to explains how people should describe their content in RDF for a better indexation into the system, how their could take advantage of Zitgist, how they can interact with it, etc.
Also check out the new logo for the Music Ontology. This is one more step to brand the Music Ontology and help its adoption among people, companies and the community.