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 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=\"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>

RDFa

An example of an RDFa Restaurant Review
<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\">Komala Vilas</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>

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”:[{ }]
}