Introduction to the Semantic Web 1

INTRODUCTION TO THE
SEMANTIC WEB
2012-11-28 Tomasz Pluskiewicz PGS Software
 Agenda
2

What is the Semantic Web?

What is data in the Semantic Web?
Storing and publishing semantic data
Querying the Semantic Web
What is there for developers?
How does the Semantic Web compare?
So who actually does the Semantic Web?

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

3 What is the Semantic Web?

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 What is the Semantic Web?
4

Semantics = meaning (from Greek)

Set of practices and standards
Synonymous or related to:
Web of data
Linked data (cloud)

Giant Global Graph (GGG)

Web 3.0

Open Data

Big Data

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 So what is it about?
5

Allowing machines to understand data

Ease sharing and mixing data
Extend the World Wide Web rather than replace it

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Little bit of history
6

1969: paper Semantic Information Processing by

Ross Quillial
1980s: CYC and WordNet
mid- to late 1990s: Tim Berners-Lee coins the term
Semantic Web
Today: dbpedia: 1.2m triples

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Semantic Web building blocks
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8 The basics of semantic data
Representation

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Its all about resources
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 Its all about resources
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Extensive use of URIs (and most often URLs)

(Almost) everyting is a URI

Example URIs:
http://infusion.com/people/tpluskiewicz

urn:isbn:1898432023

http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/firstName

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Its all findable about resources
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Identifier URI (URL?)

Representation HTML, RDF
Resource itself Described object

Identifier URI should be different than the representation URI

Identifiers should not change

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Cool URIs
12

Resource and representation have different URIs

Hash URIs
http://www.example.com/about#alice

http://www.example.com/about.html

Normal URIs
http://www.example.com/id/bob

http://www.example.com/people/bob.html

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Representing the data
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 Resource Description Format
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Facts and relations organized in triples

Triples mimic natural language sentences
Graphical representation is a directed graph

My name is Tomasz Pluskiewicz.

My age is 26.
I work for PGS Software.

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Resource Description Framework
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ex:PGS-
Software 26

ex:tpluskiewicz

foaf:fullName

Tomasz
Pluskiewicz

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Serializing RDF triples
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Format MIME type

RDF/XML (.rdf) application/rdf+xml

Notation3 (.n3) text/n3
N-Triples (.nt) text/plain
Turtle (.ttl) text/turtle
JSON-LD
TriG (.trig)
TriX (.trix)

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 RDF/XML vs Turtle
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RDF/XML Turtle

Difficult to author Simple

Verbose Concise
No cannonical Has means of further
serialization compressing content

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 There can be multiple graphs
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Sets of triples form graphs

Graphs can be named with a URI
Named graph are also resources, hence there can
be triples describing those graphs

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

19 The basics of semantic data
Adding meaning

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Representing the data
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 Basics of RDF(S) resources
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classes properties

rdfs:Resource rdf:type
rdfs:Class rdfs:label
rdfs:Property rdfs:subClassOf
rdfs:Datatype rdfs:subPropertyOf
rdfs:Literal rdfs:range
rdfs:domain

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Web Ontology Language
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OWL: Lite, DL and Full

OWL 2: EL, QL and RL
Defining constraints
Enables defining complex rules
Uses specialized syntaxes
Base terms: owl:Thing, owl:Nothing,
owl:DatatypeProperty, owl:ObjectProperty,
owl:sameAs

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Common ontologies
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Friend of a Friend Geonames

Dublin Core BIBO
SIOC
SKOS

UMBEL
Suggested Upper Merged Ontology

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Specialized ontologies
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Gene Ontology
GOLD (General O. for Linguistic Description)
Foundational Model of Anatomy
GoodRelations
Lexvo

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

26 Storing and publishing

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Storing in relational databases
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Mapping tables to triples:

D2RQ

R2RML

Ultrawrap

Using RDBMS with RDF built-in capabilities

Oracle 11g
Virtuoso

Jena SDB

IBM DB2

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Native triplestores
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Using native triple (quad) stores

Virtuoso

AllegroGraph

BigOWLIM

Jena TDB
4store

Stardog

Dydra

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Publishing data easily
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Embedding semantic markup in HTML

Microformats
Microdata
RDFa

Directly publishing RDF documents

http://manu.sporny.org/2011/uber-comparison-rdfa-md-uf/

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Microformats example
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<ul> <ul class="vcard">
<li> <li class="vcard">
Joe Doe</li> Joe Doe</li>
<li> <li class="org">
The Example Company The Example Company
</li> </li>
<li> <li class="tel">
604-555-1234</li> 604-555-1234</li>
<li> <li>
<a> <a class="url">
Website</a> Website</a>
</li> </li>
</ul> </ul>

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Microdata example
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<section itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Person">
Hello, my name is <span itemprop="name">John Doe</span>,
I am a <span itemprop="title">graduate research assistant</span>
at the <span itemprop="affiliation">University of Dreams</span>.
My friends call me <span itemprop="nickname">Johnny</span>.
You can visit my homepage at
<a href="http://www.JohnnyD.com" itemprop="url">www.JohnnyD.com</a>.
<section itemprop="address" itemscope
itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Address">
I live at <span itemprop="street-address">1234 Peach Drive</span>
<span itemprop="locality">Warner Robins</span> ,
<span itemprop="region">Georgia</span>.
</section>
</section>

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 RDFa example
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<p xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
about="http://www.example.com/books/wikinomics">
In his latest book
<cite property="dc:title">Wikinomics</cite>,
<span property="dc:creator">Don Tapscott</span>
explains deep changes in technology, demographics and business. The
book is due to be published in
<span property="dc:date" content="2006-10-01">October
2006</span>.
</p>

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Querying the Semantic Web
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 Publishing queryable data
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SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language

Remote queries through SPARQL Endpoints
SPARQL 1.1 features:
ASK, SELECT, DESCRIBE, CONSTRUCT
Aggregates

Federated queries

Extensibilty, XPath, subqueries

SPARQL Update

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 SPARQL Examples
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Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 SPARQL + rules = SPIN
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SPARQL Inferencing
Developed by TopQuadrant
Components of SPIN:
Represent SPARQL queries as RDF triples
Allow modularizing queries with spin:Function and
spin:Template
spin:MagicProperty

ASK to create constraints

CONSTRUCT to create rules

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Constraints and rules
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Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Functions and templates
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Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

What is there for developers?

Programming tools Design tools and frameworks

dotNetRDF (Web)Protg
Jena/ARQ TopBraid Composer
Rdflib NeOn
RDF.rb OntoWiki
EasyRdf
Semantic MediaWiki
Rdfquery
Cubic Web
Redland
40 Semantic Web vs X

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Semantic Web vs XML
41

Semantic Web (RDF) XML

Data representation Data serialization (syntax)

(model) Tree
Graph xsd and XPath
xsd and XPath DTD or XML schema
Schema defined with RDFS
or OWL
No built-in identifiers
URI identifiers

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Semantic Web vs REST
42

Semantic Web REST

URIs identify resources Resource Identification

HTTP encouraged to allow Uniform Interface
dereferencing
Uniform RDF messages Self-Describing Messages
Hypermedia Driving
Resources are linked Application State
(triples) Stateless Interactions
Application specific

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Semantic Web vs RDBMS
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Semantic Web Relational databases

SPARQL SQL
Felxible and extensible Schema must be defined
schema first and is rather rigid
Easy data distribution Painful replication
Depends on vendor ACID Transactions
Easier process BI Strict ETL
Open World Closed World

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Semantic Web vs NoSQL
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Semantic Web NoSQL

SPARQL Various APIs

Graph Graph, doc, key-value
Schemaless Schemaless
Named graphs Documents (doc DBs)
Built on standards and Tackle specific problems
interoperability (latency, scale, perf.)
Can seem scientific and Designed for easy
complicated adoption

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

46 Is it happening?
Who actually does the Semantic Web?

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

Linked data and open data
Dbpedia datahub.io
Freebase lod.openlinksw.com
Geonames data.gov
Social data data.gov.uk
Media datadotgc.ca
Government data openlibrary.org
Publications bnb.data.bl.uk
Many many other
http://richard.cyganiak.de/2007/10/lod/lod-datasets_2011-09-19_colored.html
Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28
 Who does the Semantic Web?
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IBM Oracle

IBM DB2 Oracle 11g

Open Services Triplestore

Lifecycle Collaboration Reasoner

Linked Data Platform

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Who does the Semantic Web?
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Google Facebook

Webmaster tools Open Graph Protocol

Knowledge graph
Freebase
RDFa/Microdata (also
Yahoo)

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Who does the Semantic Web?
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Government/public data Academic work

Thousands of datasets Gene research

Some offered in RDF
Linked by Linking Open Language processing
Government Data project Semantic MediaWiki
(200 datasets)

Open Government
Partnership (50+ countries)

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Where to learn in person?
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Semantic Technology & Business Conference

Berlin, London, New York, San Francisco
European Semantic Web Symposium
International Semantic Web Conference
International World Wide Web Conference
International Conference on Semantic Web and
Web Services
Semantic Web Applications and Tools for Life
Sciences

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 Some interesting links...
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http://semanticweb.com/
http://patterns.dataincubator.org/book/
http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/
http://spinrdf.org
Wikipedia
http://semanticweb.com/breaking-into-the-nosql-conversation_b27146
http://gigaom.com/2012/03/11/is-big-data-new-or-have-we-forgotten-its-old-
heroes/
http://www.snee.com/bobdc.blog/2012/10/sparql-and-big-data-and-nosql.html
http://dret.net/netdret/docs/soa-rest-www2009/rest
http://www.mkbergman.com/
http://www.cambridgesemantics.com/semantic-university

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28

 ...and some books
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David Wood, Linked Data, Manning
Bob DuCharme, Learning SPARQL, OReilly
Toby Segaran, Programming the Semantic Web, OReilly
John Hebeler, Semantic Web Programming, Wiley
David Siegel, Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business,
Portfolio

Introduction to the Semantic Web 2012-11-28