1. Practical Semantic Web
(and why you should care)
Boris Mann • http://bmannconsulting.com
Presented at DC DrupalCon 2009
Saturday, March 7, 2009

2. Outline
What is the Semantic Web?
Open Data!
Why should you care?
Where does Drupal come in?
What’s next?
Saturday, March 7, 2009

3. Before we begin…
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4. Before we begin…
How many people in the room are academics?
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5. Before we begin…
How many people in the room are academics?
How many people know what RDF stands for / is?
Saturday, March 7, 2009

6. Before we begin…
How many people in the room are academics?
How many people know what RDF stands for / is?
How many people are already sick of the term Web
3.0?
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7. The
Semantic
Web…
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8. The
Semantic
Web…
…is for propeller
heads with PhDs
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9. Semantic Web
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10. Semantic Web
More meaning to the web
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11. RDF
Resource Description Framework
Triples, subject-predicate-object expressions
…
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12. RDF
Resource Description Framework
Triples, subject-predicate-object expressions
…
Math is hard, let’s go shopping!
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13. RDF, basically
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14. RDF, basically
Apple is a fruit
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15. RDF, basically
Apple is a fruit
Apple is a company
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16. RDF, basically
Apple is a fruit
Apple is a company
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple
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17. RDF, basically
Apple is a fruit
Apple is a company
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple_Inc
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18. RDF, basically
Apple is a fruit
Apple is a company
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple_Inc
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple_Corps
Saturday, March 7, 2009

19. RDF, basically
Apple is a fruit
Apple is a company
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple_Inc
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple_Corps
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple_River
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20. RDF is Robot Food
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21. RDF and RDFa
[RDFa] provides a set of
On October 14, 2008 RDFa XHTML attributes to
augment visual data with
became a W3C
machine-readable hints.
Recommendation (a Web
standard) …turn the existing human-
visible text and links into
Embed RDF directly in XHTML machine-readable data
without repeating content.
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22. The link has a flavor
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23. RDFa is Robot Food
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24. RDFa Screencast
by bhuga / scor
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25. Open Data!
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26. Recovery.gov
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27. Recovery.gov
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28. Apps for Democracy:
District CTO Vivek Kundra
“While the immediate goal of the Applications for
Democracy contest is to develop innovative software to
present District data, its long-term goals are broader,” said
District CTO Vivek Kundra. “By making government data
easy for everyone to access and use, the District
hopes to foster citizen participation in government, drive
private-sector technology innovation and growth, and build
a new model for government-private sector collaboration
that can help all governments address the technology
challenges of today and tomorrow.”
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29. Apps for Democracy by
DevSeed
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30. Apps for Democracy by
DevSeed
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31. Apps for Democracy by
DevSeed
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32. “Just” Open
Have to download /
import data
Pure robot food - still
needs programmers to
make it play nice with
humans
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33. Processing is moving
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34. Processing is moving
Past:
Move the data to where the processing is
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35. Processing is moving
Past:
Move the data to where the processing is
Future:
Move the processing to where the data is
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36. Amazon gives away free TB
Amazon is storing public datasets - over 1 TB of data
It actually saves them money, but it also makes their
customers’ applications faster (processing next to
data)
Trevor O: if other hosting companies did this, then if
even 2 people used it, they would save money -
moving data across the LAN is cheaper than across the
WAN
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37. Read Write Web on Amazon
Public Data Sets
You've read, or can imagine, the impact that the first Public
Libraries had on human culture. Now imagine the opening
up of not just this, but other libraries of data, so huge that
economies of scale blast the project off beyond any analogy
that could be drawn with our everyday experience or historical
memories. It won't just be Amazon that offers up this kind of
data - it will be relatively commonplace soon, we imagine.
It will be like a network of libraries - for robots. Robots that
go to the library frequently, read very fast and make serious
use of what they've learned.
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38. Where does Drupal come in?
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39. Drupal is getting semantic
Looks to be the first general purpose CMS that has
significant semantic data out of the box
If we ship Drupal 7 with semantic data turned on out of
the box (i.e. content you create is automatically marked
up), will probably be the most widely deployed
semantic platform
200K downloads / month plus lots of people creating
content = lots of semantic data from the bottom up
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40. Linking
Open Data
…the data sets consist of
over two billion RDF
triples, which are interlinked
by around 3 million RDF
links (Oct. 2007)
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41. Bottoms up
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42. Bottoms up
Can Drupal help enable the growth of the semantic
web from the bottom up?
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43. Bottoms up
Can Drupal help enable the growth of the semantic
web from the bottom up?
200,000 downloads x 10 links per page
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44. Bottoms up
Can Drupal help enable the growth of the semantic
web from the bottom up?
200,000 downloads x 10 links per page
= 2,000,000 RDF links
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45. Bottoms up
Can Drupal help enable the growth of the semantic
web from the bottom up?
200,000 downloads x 10 links per page
= 2,000,000 RDF links
(per month)
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46. Drupal everywhere
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47. Drupal everywhere
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48. Drupal everywhere
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49. Drupal everywhere
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50. Why should you care?
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51. Views across the Web
Remember the first time you had your mind blown
when building views?
What if you could operate on any data, anywhere on
the web, with a similar interface?
That’s why you should care about the Semantic Web -
it enables this
This is where I mention SPARQL
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52. Or maybe you care about
money
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53. Or maybe you care about
money
What does “Blog” stand for?
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54. Or maybe you care about
money
What does “Blog” stand for?
Better Listings On Google
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55. Or maybe you care about
money
What does “Blog” stand for?
Better Listings On Google
CMS?
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56. Or maybe you care about
money
What does “Blog” stand for?
Better Listings On Google
CMS?
Content Made Semantic
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57. Or maybe you care about
money
What does “Blog” stand for?
Better Listings On Google
CMS?
Content Made Semantic
Semantic “land rush” will happen
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58. What’s next?
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59. Some examples
RDF, RDF CCK, RDF evoc,
SPARQL, etc.
MOAT - Meaning of a Tag
Exhibit - complex mashups
and visualization with no
coding or theming
…go forth and experiment
and build today
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60. Exhibit Examples
http://simile.mit.edu/exhibit/examples/senate/senate.html
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61. Exhibit Examples
http://simile.mit.edu/exhibit/examples/senate/senate.html
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62. Mission: Possible
Dries said “Every movement needs a mission”
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63. Mission: Possible
Dries said “Every movement needs a mission”
Drupal’s mission is to help evolve the web
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64. How do we do it?
We pioneered aggregation, multi user blogging,
taxonomy and more on a platform that runs anywhere
Help make Drupal 7 the first semantic enabled CMS
Not just “the first” - but the one that just works, while
you’re building powerful, usable sites
Saturday, March 7, 2009

65. How do we do it?
We pioneered aggregation, multi user blogging,
taxonomy and more on a platform that runs anywhere
Help make Drupal 7 the first semantic enabled CMS
Not just “the first” - but the one that just works, while
you’re building powerful, usable sites
Kickstart the semantic web from the bottom up
Saturday, March 7, 2009

66. FINIS
Questions? Comments? Discussion?
Saturday, March 7, 2009