A browser for exploring the Linked Open Data cloud using OpenLink Facets API Live demo available at http://www.razorbase.com
Parallax
A browser for exploring the Freebase database using the Freebase API Live demo available at http://mqlx.com/~david/parallax
Task 1 : Find all U.S. Presidents
Razorbase : Start with a lookup for things named presidents
Parallax : Start by selecting U.S. Presidents collection from auto-suggest menu
First Razorbase …
List of results
Filters (facets)
click Your view to reveal
Razorbase : Junk in result set
To refine our results, let’s first filter general results by Category to eliminate unrelated results
Next, refine query to return not things named presidents, but things connected to presidents
Zoom in to only Famous People
Now Parallax …
Filter (facets)
Properties of resources
Shows the property and all values for that property
Clicking a value adds a filter
Group view
Let’s scroll page right
View options
Properties menu
Clicking one shows the list of values for that property, along with each subject
Parallax : Let’s switch to table view
Select table view type
Let’s scroll page left
List of results
Task 2 : Find the schools of the children of the presidents
Razorbase : Use About tab and blue right arrows to explore and select properties for the subject
Parallax : Use add link and auto-suggest box to lookup and select the properties
First Razorbase …
Let’s scroll page down
Found Children
click blue right arrow navigates to children of President
Razorbase : Found the Children, now let’s view their schools
About tabs lists all information about the subject
Let’s scroll page down
Found schools
Select one
Razorbase : Sparse results
Hmmm… only a few schools, let’s check the main subject using the breadcrumb to investigate
Follow breadcrumb back to the main subject
Razorbase : Sparse results
Hmm… only Bill Clinton shows up
Let’s modify the query to lookup things connected to president (i.e. remove the trailing ‘s’)
Click to show Query description and facets/filters
Deleted the ‘s’, now press Enter or click the Green Go Arrow
Razorbase : View target subject
That seemed to return more results
Now navigate to the Children of the subject
Let’s scroll page right
Click to view the list of the values for this property
Go to children
Go to children Let’s scroll page right
Razorbase : View target subject
From here, view inbound and outbound connections and their values
Go to children
Click to reveal the value
Now Parallax …
Let’s scroll page right
Click the add link to show controls for adding properties
Let’s scroll page left
Let’s scroll page down
Parallax : Select a property of the selected property
The chain another property link allows you to add properties of the selected property
Let’s scroll page right
Let’s scroll page left
Parallax : View target subject
Clicking Done will add the selected connections as columns to the main table
Only the last subject in the chain seems to appear in the table, the children node is missing
Click to add properties to table as columns
Presidents
Schools of their children
… but where are the President’s children???
Task 2 : Ancestry
Now let’s explore the genealogy of the Presidents
Razorbase : Use the descendents button to explore ancestry (i.e. people taught be the students of a teacher, grandchildren, friend of a friend, etc.)
Parallax : Use the properties selector
First Razorbase …
Click to view connections …
… of this type (i.e. descendents)
Razorbase : Sparse results
We are now viewing the grandchildren of the main subject
The results are ready, but the service ran out of time, so let’s increase the timeout to give the service time to return more results
Extend the time for retrieving results
Razorbase : Their schools
Click the About tab to view the subject’s information
Find and select school property
Click to view information about the subject
Found alma maters
Select one
View those who attended this school
show values
Let’s scroll page right
Razorbase : Now their children
Let’s scroll page left
Click to see children of this subject
Now Parallax …
Parallax : Ancestry
We are now viewing the main subject
We need to focus on Children, unfortunately, adding properties via the add link does not update breadcrumbs
Let’s scroll page up
Parallax : Ancestry
We are now focused on the Children of the main subject
Since we want the grandchildren of the main subject, let’s navigate one more time to the children of this subject
Let’s scroll page right
Parallax: Mutual Connections
We now have the grandchildren
Let’s view the schools they attended
Let’s scroll page right
Task 2: Mutual Connections
Now let’s view who else has attended school which the children of presidents attended
Razorbase : Use the shares button to explore mutual connections
Parallax : Use the properties selector
First Razorbase …
Navigate to the children of presidents
Razorbase : Sparse results
The filters have limited the results set, so let’s remove some filters to return to all children of presidents
Show filters
Razorbase : Query Description
Query description expresses the criteria of your query in plain language
Subjects are color-coded to help user trace the subjects to the criteria in which they are involved
Razorbase : Sparse results
Remove the criteria that says the presidents must have grandchildren
Click to remove criteria and sub-criteria
Razorbase : Mutual Connections
Since a criteria has been removed, user is taken to the properties explorer
Click the back to results button, or About tab to navigate back to the President’s children subject
However, we’re interested in the schools they attended, so use the link in the Query description to switch focus
Go to the schools of the children
Razorbase : Mutual Connections
Now view other people who have attended these schools
Click to show all who share things…
… of this property type
Let’s scroll page right
Breadcrumbs express the mutual connection
Razorbase : Mutual Connections
We now have all people who attended the same schools attended by the children of people connected to U. S. Presidents
Now let’s filter the list to include only Children who attended schools that John McCain attended
Let’s scroll page down
Found John McCain …
… now add a criteria for his school
Razorbase : Mutual Connections
It appears that Jimmy Carter also attended the school John McCain attended
It also says he’s a child of the subject, but can this be?
First, let’s check the Query description to understand and verify all connections
Razorbase: Mutual Connections
All checks out there
Let’s peeks at who is Jimmy Carter’s father
Click to see its parents
Razorbase : Mutual Connections
It appears the Jimmy Carter in question is a junior, let’s see if his father is Jimmy Carter the U. S. President
To do this, we view the categories that the parents appear under, if one is U.S. President , we can assume that refers to James Carter , and not Lillian Carter
Razorbase : Mutual Connections
We now discover that the Jimmy Carter in question is the U.S. President Jimmy Carter (a child of our query’s main subject) attended the same school as John McCain
Now let’s view all other people who have attended this school, regardless of their relationship to the main subject
… or
Go to all who have attended this school
Razorbase : Mutual Connections
Group them by category
Now Parallax …
Parallax: Mutual Connections
To recap, we now have the schools of the children of U.S. Presidents
We are interested in mutual attendants of these schools
Let’s scroll page right
Let’s scroll page left
…
Let’s scroll page down
Parallax: Mutual Connections
It appears Parallax does not (yet) support exploration of mutual connections
Conclusion
Both Razorbase and Parallax are powerful tools for navigating databases
Razorbase exploits schema-level metadata such as property transitivity to give users one-click access to useful connection types, while the schema metadata available to Parallax is less robust
Razorbase navigates linkages across a large network of database sources, while Parallax is currently limited to Freebase
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Huiyao Wu
