{"id":851,"date":"2007-11-30T14:57:12","date_gmt":"2007-11-30T18:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fgiasson.com\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/11\/30\/zitgist-dataviewer\/"},"modified":"2007-11-30T16:09:40","modified_gmt":"2007-11-30T20:09:40","slug":"zitgist-dataviewer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fgiasson.com\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/11\/30\/zitgist-dataviewer\/","title":{"rendered":"Zitgist DataViewer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zitgist is releasing a totally new semantic Web data viewer: the Zitgist DataViewer<\/a> (on test servers). This new Web service pushes even further the semantic Web data visualization principles initiated with the Zitgist Browser<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The goal of the Zitgist DataViewer visualization tool is to provide a user interface that morphs semantic Web data into a form that can be easily read and understood by humans. The Zitgist DataViewer moves this vision forward in three ways by:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Adding features to help users manage the overload of information published from some data sources,<\/li>\n
  2. Speeding up the data visualization process and giving more feedback to users when data sources are being analyzed and documents constructed, and<\/li>\n
  3. Changing the templating system to make them cope with a wider range of type entities even if these types are unknown by the system.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In this blog post I will show you all the new features of the Zitgist DataViewer, how it can be used, and how each feature enhances the experience of users.<\/p>\n

    <\/h3>\n

    Main Entity Display Sections<\/h3>\n

    On the semantic Web, everything is a \u201cresource\u201d. A resource can be seen as an Entity, or sometimes also called a Thing. This thing can be a person, an album, a place in the World, etc. Each entity is described by its properties: the age of a person, the name of an album, the population of a city, etc.<\/p>\n

    The Zitgist DataViewer reads all the information available for these entities, and displays it to the user as best as it can so that users can easily read and understand information about these various entities.<\/p>\n

    The first step performed by the Zitgist DataViewer is to get information about that entity and to create the Web page that will be presented to users. Figure 1 <\/em>is the progress bar showing the status of the Web page creation process to the user.<\/p>\n

    \"page_load_progress_bar2.png\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Figure 1<\/em><\/center>
    \nAs you can see in Figure 2<\/em>, each entity is represented in a table. Within each table, information available about entities is displayed to users. Figure 2 <\/em>represents information available about a person called     Ivan Herman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \"general_resource.png\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Figure 2<\/em><\/center>These are the six main section of a table representing an entity:<\/p>\n
      \n
    1. Tab<\/strong>. This tab displays the type of the entity. In this case, Ivan is a Person. If the table is collapsed (see section about tools), the name of the entity will be displayed in the tab instead of the type.<\/li>\n
    2. General information<\/strong>. This section displays general information about an entity. In this example, since the entity is a person, the name of that person, his contact information, his location and a photo of the person are displayed in the \u201cgeneral information section\u201d.<\/li>\n
    3. Tools<\/strong>. These tools are used to perform action on an entity table.<\/li>\n
    4. See-more<\/strong>. This section aggregates all the same properties describing a person. By clicking on the \u201csee-more\u201d button, the complete list of properties will be displayed to the user. This feature gives an additional means for users to manage information overload.<\/li>\n
    5. References<\/strong>. This section lists all other entities referring to the viewed entity. For example, in this case the references are each entity that \u201cknows\u201d Ivan, such as friends, co-workers, etc.<\/li>\n
    6. Information sources<\/strong>. This section displays clickable links to the locations of all Web sites that contributed the actual information displayed in the DataViewer.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Note \u2013 depending on the specific type of Entity at hand \u2013 there are multiple display formats or \u201ctemplates\u201d (see below) that structure the content and format of the actual data presentation within the DataViewer.<\/p>\n

      The General Information Section<\/h3>\n

      \"contact_information_section.png\"<\/a><\/p>\n

      Figure 3<\/em><\/p>\n

      This section displays all general information about an entity. General information is typically the information a human would think best describes a particular type of entity. For example, typical information about a person would be name, contact information, location, birthdate, occupation, photo, etc.<\/p>\n

      Tools<\/h3>\n

      \"resources_tools.png\"<\/a><\/p>\n

      Figure 4<\/em><\/p>\n

      These tools shown in the red box are used to perform some actions on the entity table. From the left, the icons do the following:<\/p>\n