Freebase, RDF and the Semantic Web

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

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

Ugly Tabular Data

A Simple Restaurant Schema

A Big, Ugly Schema

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

Using Graphs to Model Data

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

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

Why Does This Work? • 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

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

Freebase is a database of things.

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

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

All objects in Freebase have strong identiﬁers!

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

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

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

Once you access an object in Freebase you have access to all facets of information Po litic al s C ter on ar trib qu d de uti ad n ou on He SIC F ate s Co D de co me era ting In CIK Code Op Boeing Marke ol t Capit r Symb alizatio Ticke n CE ies O iar red ured sid b Su ctu t ufac ufa an Man ft M cra kets Air Roc

What are people doing with the results?

Microsoft Political Blog

What else can you do with Freebase?

Use Freebase to publish into the LOD Cloud

http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/en.terri_brosius <fb:people.sibling_relationship rdf:about=quot;http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/guid.9202a8c04000641f8000000004598a74quot;> <fb:people.sibling_relationship.sibling rdf:resource=quot;http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/en.carlene_barousquot;/> <fb:people.sibling_relationship.sibling rdf:resource=quot;http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/en.terri_brosiusquot;/> </fb:people.sibling_relationship>

An example of an RDFa Restaurant Review Komala Vilas Meenakshi Ammal 3.7 1st April 2005 Best south Indian vegetarian food in the bay area

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

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

ACRE: The Freebase Javascript Development Environment

The Acre application environment

A source of Vocabularies

Freebase is a database of types. A source of Vocabularies

public domain photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SwissReHQ.jpg

photo by Jamie

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

sameas.freebase.com

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

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

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

http://www.marketing-internet-montreal.com	268
http://blog.freebase.com	61
http://www.slideshare.net	33
http://paper.li	5
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	2
http://linkeddata.uriburner.com	1
http://127.0.0.1:8795	1
http://roblog.freebase.com	1

Freebase, RDF and the Semantic Web

by Jamie Taylor on May 18, 2009

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

8 Embeds 372

Statistics

Freebase, RDF and the Semantic Web — Presentation Transcript