A presentation to the SF Semantic Web Meet-up (5/14/09) describing Freebase and its connection to RDF, Linked Data and the Semantic Web.

1. SF Semantic Web Meet-up May 2009
Colin Evans + Jamie Taylor
A socially managed semantic database

2. A Brief History of Data Modeling
Photo CC-BY: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:McDonalds_on_Interstate_44.jpg

3. Ugly Tabular Data

4. A Simple Restaurant Schema

5. A Simple Restaurant Schema

6. A Big, Ugly Schema

7. What Went Wrong?
• Things change
• Requirements change
• User expectations change
• Data structures change
• Our data models aren’t keeping up

8. Using Graphs to Model Data

9. Metadata is Data
• Relationships are represented explicitly
• Schema can be represented as a graph
• Data integration is the union of two graphs
• This makes creating, extending, and
combining data much easier than before

10. A
B
C
E
F
E
D
C
B
A
Data Integration

11. • Semantics facilitate shared meaning through
• Subject Identity
• Strong and Consistent Semantics
• Open APIS + Open Data
• These principles make it much easier to
extend, combine, and integrate data
Why Does This Work?

12. What is Freebase?
• Structured Database
• Strong Collaboratively Edited Subjects
• Strong Collaboratively Developed
Semantics
• Open API + Open Data

13. Freebase is a database of things.

24. 5,203,825 Topics
14,110,006 Named Entities

26. Users can write to Freebase
+ add entities
+ add properties
+ create data models!

27. All objects in Freebase have strong identifiers!

34. /guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000000009d0e
/business/cik/0000012927
/wikipedia/en_id/3709
/wikipedia/en/Boeing
/en/boeing
NYSE: BA
TYO: 7661

35. http://blog.kiwitobes.com/?p=57

36. Topics in Freebase are Unique
(no two Topics represent the same thing)

37. Boeing
Market Capitalization
CEO
AircraftManufactured
Ticker Symbol
Subsidiaries
CIK Code
SIC Code
Operating Income
Date Founded
Headquarters
PoliticalContributions
RocketsManufactured
Once you access an object in Freebase you
have access to all facets of information

38. What are people doing with the results?

45. Microsoft Political Blog

48. What else can you do with Freebase?

49. Use Freebase to publish into the LOD Cloud

51. <fb:people.sibling_relationship
rdf:about="http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/guid.9202a8c04000641f8000000004598a74">
<fb:people.sibling_relationship.sibling
rdf:resource="http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/en.carlene_barous"/>
<fb:people.sibling_relationship.sibling
rdf:resource="http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/en.terri_brosius"/>
</fb:people.sibling_relationship>
http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/en.terri_brosius

52. RDFa

53. <span xmlns:v="http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org/" typeof="v:Review">
<span rel="v:itemReviewed">
<span about="http://komalavilas.com" property="v:name"
typeof="v:Restaurant">KomalaVilas</span>
</span>
<span rel="v:reviewer">
<span about="http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/en.s_meenakshi_ammal"
property="v:name">Meenakshi Ammal</span>
</span>
<span property="v:rating" >3.7</span>
<span property="v:date">1st April 2005</span>
<span property="v:summary">
Best south Indian vegetarian food in the bay area</span>
</span>
An example of an RDFa Restaurant Review

54. 5,203,825 Topics
14,110,006 Named Entities

55. Freebase Suggest
http://code.google.com/p/freebase-suggest/

56. ACRE:
The Freebase Javascript Development Environment

57. The Acre application environment

58. A source of Vocabularies

59. Freebase is a database of types.
A source of Vocabularies

63. publicdomainphoto:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SwissReHQ.jpg

64. photobyJamie

67. Can’t find a vocabulary you need?
Write your own!

69. sameas.freebase.com

70. /en/ibm
sameas.freebase.com
CIK
0000051143
GovTrack

71. MQL: Metaweb Query Language
{
“id”:”/en/ibm”,
“type”:”/business/company”,
“founded”:null
}
Query:
July 15, 1916

72. MQL Extensions + sameAs Map
{
“id”:”/en/ibm”,
“type”:”/business/company”,
“lod”:[{ }]
}
Query: