Evolving the Web into a Giant Global Database

Evolving the Web into a Giant Global Database

Marko A. Rodriguez
T-5, Center for Nonlinear Studies
Los Alamos National Laboratory
http://markorodriguez.com

February 12, 2009

Abstract

The Web as we know it today will not be the Web as we know it
tomorrow. The Web of today is oriented towards the universal accessibility
of ﬁles (e.g. web pages, images). The Web of today can be thought of as
a large-scale, distributed ﬁle system. The Web of tomorrow will encode
any datum (e.g. strings, integers, dates). The Web of tomorrow can be
thought of as a large-scale, distributed database. This talk will discuss the
the future Web with special focus on the supporting standards and
application visions.

New Mexico Internet Professionals Association Lecture (NMIPA) – Santa Fe, New Mexico – February 12, 2009

Outline

• The Space of Uniform Resource Identiﬁers

• The World Wide Web vs. the Semantic Web

• Relational Databases vs. Triple Stores

• Ontologies and Reasoning

• General-Purpose Computing on the Semantic Web


Internet Address Spaces

• The Uniform Resource Identiﬁer (URI) is the superclass of the Uniform
Resource Locator (URL) and Uniform Resource Name (URN).


The Uniform Resource Locator
• The set of all URLs is the address space of all resources that can be
located and retrieved on the Web. URLs denote where a resource is.
http://markorodriguez.com/index.html
∗ Domain name server (DNS): markorodriguez.com → 216.251.43.6
∗ http:// means GET at port 80,
∗ /index.html means the resource to get at that Internet location.

Web Server

index.html

markorodriguez.com
216.251.43.6


The Uniform Resource Name

• The set of all URNs is the address space of all resources within the urn:
namespace.
urn:uuid:bd93def0-8026-11dd-842be54955baa12
urn:issn:0892-3310
urn:doi:10.1016/j.knosys.2008.03.030

• Named resources need not be retrievable through the Web.

• URNs denote what a resource is.


The Uniform Resource Identifier
• The URI address space is an infinite space for all Internet resources.
http://markorodriguez.com/index.html
urn:issn:0892-3310
ftp://markorodriguez.com/private/markos_secrets.txt
http://www.lanl.gov#fluffy

• Imporant: URIs can denote concepts, instances, and datum.

lanl:fluffy lanl:fluffy_legs


The “Uniform Resource Graph”

• We can denote where something is, what something is, but how do we
denote how something relates to something else?

• How can we denote what something means, where meaning is determined
by its place within a larger relational structure?
URIs are like words. They denote things in the real or imaginary world.
Linking URIs is like deﬁning words. Similar to how a dictionary deﬁnes
words in terms of other words.


Undirected Single-Relational Network

Human-D
Human-B

Human-F
Human-C

Human-A

Human-E


Directed Single-Relational Network

Article-D
Article-B

Article-F
Article-C

Article-A

Article-E


From the World Wide Web to the Semantic Web
• The World Wide Web is primarily concerned with the Hyper-Text
Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and with retrievable resources in the URL
address space.

• These retrievable resources are ﬁles: HTML documents, images, audio,
etc. The “web” is created when HTML documents contain URLs.
http://markorodriguez.com/

index.html

href

Resume.html href Home.html href Research.html


Directed Multi-Relational Network

Publisher-A
Article-A

publishedBy

authored editorOf Human-B
Journal-A

containedIn authored

Human-A
authored
Article-B


From the World Wide Web to the Semantic Web

• The Semantic Web is primarily concerned with URIs. If the World
Wide Web is the web of files, the Semantic Web is the web of concepts.
In other words, for the World Wide Web, the level of granularity is
the retrievable file. For the Semantic Web, it is the ideas in that file.
Moreover, these ideas are not necessarily contained in a file. There
existence is predicated on their URI. Their meaning is predicated on their
relationship to other URIs. The web of URIs is the Semantic Web.


The Resource Description Framework
• The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is the standard for
representing the relationship between URIs and literals (e.g. ﬂoat, string,
date time, etc.). I would have preferred the name “Uniform Resource
Graph” (URG).

• Relationships are directed, labeled links between URIs. A subject URI
points to an object URI or literal by means of a predicate URI.

subject predicate object

lanl:marko foaf:knows lanl:jhw

foaf:name foaf:name

"Marko A. Rodrigez"^^xsd:string "Jennifer H. Watkins"^^xsd:string


foaf:Organization "University of New
"Los Alamos National
Laboratory"^^xsd:string Mexico"^^xsd:string

rdf:type rdf:type
foaf:name foaf:name

foaf:Document
lanl:lanl unm:unm

rdf:type
foaf:member
foaf:member
urn:doi:10.1016/j.joi.2008.04.002
foaf:member
foaf:Person

foaf:publications
rdf:type rdf:type

lanl:marko foaf:knows lanl:jhw

foaf:name foaf:name

"Marko A. Rodrigez"^^xsd:string "Jennifer H. Watkins"^^xsd:string


The RDF Data Model and its Serializations

• RDF is a data model. As such, there exists many serializations
(encodings) of that model.

• RDF/XML is not RDF. It is a serialization of RDF. It is smart to, at all
costs, avoid learning RDF/XML as it is an unintuitive standard. Other
serializations include: N-TRIPLE, N3, TRIX, TRIG, ...

<http://www.lanl.gov/uc33c7c98> <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type> <http://www.mesur.org/schemas/2007-01/mesur#Journal> .
<http://www.lanl.gov/uc33c7c98> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name> "Journal of Neuroscience Research"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string> .
<http://www.lanl.gov/uc33c7c98> <http://www.mesur.org/schemas/2007-01/mesur#hasDoi> "urn:doi:10.1002/(issn)1097-4547"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#anyURI> .
<http://www.lanl.gov/uc33c7c98> <http://www.mesur.org/schemas/2007-01/mesur#hasIssn> "urn:issn:0360-4012"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#anyURI> .
<http://www.lanl.gov/uc33c7c98> <http://www.mesur.org/schemas/2007-01/mesur#hasIssn> "urn:issn:1097-4547"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#anyURI> .


The Semantic Web is a Distributed Database

• The URI address space is distributed.

• URIs can denote datum.

• RDF denotes the relationships URIs.

• The Semantic Web’s foundational standard is RDF.

• Therefore, the Semantic Web is a distributed database.


The World Wide Web vs. the Semantic Web

Web Server Web Server

HTML href HTML

127.0.0.1 127.0.0.2

Web Server Triple Store

RDF foaf:knows

127.0.0.1 127.0.0.2


Linked Data Cloud1
ECS Sem-
South- Web-
ampton Central
updated

Music- Doap-
Audio- space Flickr
brainz
Scrobbler QDOS exporter SIOC
profiles

BBC BBC Magna-
Onto- SW
Later + John tune
Jamendo world
Conference
TOTP Peel FOAF Corpus
profiles Open-
Guides
Geo-
names Revyu

DBpedia RDF Book
US
Census Mashup
World
Data NEW! Fact- DBLP
book lingvoj
riese Berlin
NEW!
RKB
Euro- Explorer
stat
flickr
Gov- Wiki- Open wrappr
Track company Cyc
DBLP
Hannover
W3C Project
WordNet Guten-
berg

1
provided by Richard Cyganiak (richard@cyganiak.de)


Relational Databases vs. Triple Stores: Technology

• A relational databases’ (e.g. MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle) natural
representation is a collection interlinked tables.

• A triple stores’ (e.g. OpenSesame, AllegroGraph, Neo4j) natural
representation is a multi-relational network, or graph.

Relational Database Triple Store

127.0.0.1 127.0.0.2


Relational Databases vs. Triple Stores: Culture

• Relational databases tend to not maintain public access points.

• Relational database users tend to not publish their schemas.

• Triple stores maintain public access points called SPARQL end-points.

• Triple store users tend to reuse and extend public schemas called
ontologies.


SQL vs. SPARQL

SELECT ?x WHERE {
?y foaf:name "Los Alamos National Laboratory"^^xsd:string .
?y foaf:member ?x .
?x foaf:knows ?z .
?z foaf:name "Marko A. Rodriguez"^^xsd:string }

SELECT p1.id
FROM person p1, organization o1 AS r1, person p2 WHERE
o1.name="Los Alamos National Laboratory" AND
o1.id = p1.member AND
p1.id = r1.id AND
r1.knows=p2.id AND
p2.name="Marko A. Rodriguez";


Ontologies

• An ontology deﬁnes your domain of discourse.

• An ontology helps to deﬁne the types of abstract classes that exist in
your domain and the types of relationships that exist between instances
of those classes.

• An ontology allows you to infer implicit knowledge from explicit
knowledge.


"1"^^xsd:int owl:Restriction
lanl:Mammal

owl:maxCardinality rdf:type

rdf:subClassOf lanl:hasOwner owl:onProperty _:12345

rdf:type
rdf:type rdfs:subClassOf
foaf:Person
lanl:Dog

rdf:type
rdf:type rdf:type

lanl:jhw owl:differentFrom lanl:marko lanl:hasOwner lanl:ﬂuffy

lanl:hasOwner


General-Purpose Computing on the Semantic Web

• It is possible to represent a virtual computing machine and software in
the Semantic Web.

• Given that the URI address space is distributed, the computing structures
are inherently distributed.

• Thus, the Semantic Web can be used as a giant computer – data,
programs, and virtual machines all within the same address space.


x = (3 ∗ 2) + 1
urn:uuid:
lanl:Push rdf:type neno:hasValue "1"^^xsd:int
3cff4d2e

neno:nextInst

urn:uuid:
403d632c

neno:nextInst

urn:uuid:
47fe91e2

neno:nextInst

urn:uuid:
lanl:Multiply rdf:type
7c08528e

neno:nextInst

urn:uuid:
lanl:Add rdf:type "x"^^xsd:string
7c08528e

neno:nextInst

urn:uuid:
lanl:Set rdf:type neno:hasSymbol
361604bc


xsd:boolean RVM xsd:boolean
[1] [1]

methodReuse halt

programLocation Fhat

operandTop hasFrame
returnTop

[0..1] [0..1] [0..1]
currentFrame
[0..1] Operand [0..1]
Instruction ReturnStack
Stack
rdf:rest rdf:rest blockTop
rdf:first [0..1] [0..*]
rdf:first
[0..1]
[0..1] forFrame Frame
[1]
rdfs:Resource Instruction
rdf:li
[0..*]

[0..1] [0..1] Frame
Block
Variable
Stack
rdf:rest hasSymbol hasValue fromBlock
rdf:first
[0..1] [1] [0..*] [1]

Block xsd:string rdfs:Resource Block


Conclusion

• Thank you for your time...
My homepage: http://markorodriguez.com
Neno/Fhat: http://neno.lanl.gov


Evolving the Web into a Giant Global Database

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